2005 de nieuwe stem. yuill | crowley, Sydney, NSW, Sept - Oct.
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION – The collective et al
by
Ewen McDonald
... even in an academic context I would never talk about
the work of et al., still less ‘explain’ it, except
to show recorded material (video, images, sound) –
the process of viewing art provides the explanation,
and it is invariably particular to the viewer. The
artist is exactly the wrong person to explain their
work, and rarely tries...
dr p mule (on behalf of the collective, et al.)
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Possibility #1
To introduce the artists known as et al., I could
simply paraphrase an earlier text outlining the work
of the group. It would begin by drawing attention to
the signature grey mix of paint that has become a
defining feature of the artists’ practice and further,
how that particular greyness has come to characterise
the deliberate blurring of content – the handwritten
texts and scrawled notes, the tables and electrical
equipment, the computer programming, the sound mixes and
sequencing, the philosophical speculations and fanatical
ranting interspersed with poetic quotations and other
assorted extracts... all merged together to absorb, even
confound, the viewer. In short, an installation by et
al. is an experiential encounter with aspects of human
history and knowledge, a confrontation with an increased
legacy of over-determining discourses. To summarise:
Technology – both as medium and as subject – is an
important aspect in the work of et al.. Projects over
the last decades have included film, video and sound,
often incorporating out-dated technologies (e.g.
thermometers, old computers and turntables, lights and
abandoned industrial equipment) for their emotional and
psychological associations. This mixture of old and new
media raises issues such as conformity, oppression and
surveillance in contemporary society. Working with the
idea of ‘trace’ and ‘memory’, et al. employs processes
of collection and recollection as a means of social
and institutional critique in order to explore the
connection between fact and myth. Texts and quotation are
characteristic features – especially those connected with
art history, and literary and philosophic traditions.
The issue of multiple personae (as represented by the
artistic collective) is an important aspect of the work:
it can be considered a comment on the impact of twentieth
century psychology – specifically the work of Freud. The
installations tend to focus on notions of derangement,
abnormality, disturbance and dysfunctionality in relation
to both the individual and collective psyche – and the
‘grunge aesthetic’ often employed by et al. is also
deliberate: what can be a challenge for some viewers is
hauntingly beautiful for others
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Possibility #2
Perhaps a more matter-of-fact introductory note is in
order. It could read:
Et al. is one of the most innovative and challenging
artist collectives operating out of New Zealand. Since
the mid-1970s they have presented an array of artistic
and literary projects that has led to an increased
international awareness of this very particular and
idiosyncratic practice. The artistic collective is an
assorted group of individuals and groups including:
popular productions; cj [arthur] craig and sons; l budd;
lionel b; merit gröting; the blanche readymade trust;
p mule and others...
And one could highlight career achievements to date:
for instance, et al.’s inclusion in major surveys of New
Zealand art such as Headlands (Museum of Contemporary
Art, Sydney 1992) and Toi, Toi, Toi (Museum Fridericianum,
Kassel, Germany and Auckland Art Gallery, 1999); and
their participation in international exhibitions such
as Construction in Process (The Artists’ Museum, Lodz,
Poland 1993); Container ‘96 Art Across Oceans (Copenhagen
1997); Close Quarters (Australian Centre for Contemporary
Art, Melbourne 1999 and touring Australia and New Zealand
1999-2001); and Public/Private: Tumatanui/ Tumataiti,
the 2nd Auckland Triennial, New Zealand, 2004. And there
have been a number of significant solo projects by the
group such as the major survey and publication organised
by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, in
2003, and installations for The Wanderer Project, Parts
I & II at SOFA Gallery, Christchurch, in 2002, and
Museum De Paviljoens, Almere, The Netherlands in 2004.
Finally, of course there is the Walters Prize, 2005 and
the controversial selection of et al. as New Zealand’s
representative for the 2005 Venice Biennale – an inspired
choice for many, but not so for a handful of conservative
bureaucrats and politicians concerned about the state
of art and the representation of national identity.
Official discomfort even led to parliamentary debate:
the criticism being that et al. was, in no way, an ‘ideal
ambassador’ for New Zealand.
Regardless of the controversy and identity of members,
the important thing about et al. is that it is an astute
if somewhat amorphous entity whose artistic enterprise
is motivated and determined by their carefully devised,
strategic investigations. One possible reason for the
anonymous, perhaps fictitious collective as author of
the work (hence et al., ‘and others’), is the issue
of gender and cultural politics when it comes to
attributing, affirming, assigning authorship with any
degree of certainty. Operating as a trans-gender / transcultural
collective circumvents problems of definition
and presumption, and acknowledges all contributors,
collaborators and other technical specialists.
Further, it could be suggested that the group, the
body, is like the human system itself laid out and made
measurable – an interlocking network exposed. As onetime
member Lionel Gootschalk once disclosed at the
start of a particular project, their procedure would
be an ‘attempt to document experimental approaches for
altering consciousness’ ... ‘exploring mind control and
behaviour modification as apparent methods and apparatus
for enhancing human potential’ ... ‘establishing systems
of error as valid parameters of investigation’. To these
ends Gootschalk mentioned that they would incorporate
‘outdated and dysfunctional apparatus as the embodiment
of incoherent thinking systems.’ (from an email sent
at 9.25pm, 2/28/02). Gootschalk followed up with the
following note:
The sense of the work is the legitimacy of thought
reform – not necessarily producing psychosis but a new
improved societal member (although psychosis may be a
by-product of the system also). Refer to the fourth
method of deprivation of external information and inner
reflection or behaviour control, information control,
thought control and emotional control – the 4 c’s.
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Possibility #3
Another form of introduction could be to quote particular
responses to the practice. For a number of writers,
for instance, et al.’s installation for the recent 2nd
Auckland Triennial was a pivotal work:
Et al.’s grey bureaucratic-technical “control room”, consisting
of old computers and superseded equipment and
office furniture, [with its] mesmeric machine sound...
responded with wry humour to a sense of politicaltechnological
control, once thought to be part of
totalitarian cultures but increasingly the everyday
experience in a heightened security conscious world.
– [Helen Grace, The Bulletin, Sydney, 27 April 2004]
The public part of the theme is emphasised by an
installation by et al., a name that conceals the identity
of a New Zealand artist who assumes many names. This is
a room bleakly empty of people but full of industrial
trolleys that once, no doubt, held valuable commodities.
Now they are grey and dusty. On them lie faded orchestral
programmes and each supports an outmoded computer whose
screens show simple graphs. It is all a relic of some
important process but it is suggested that all it
ultimately produced was excrement. This is emphasised
by two big, grey portaloos standing in the corners. The
impersonal industrial atmosphere is intensified by the
unnatural humming of power coming from the machinery.
It is a grim vision but an undoubtable effective comment
on some aspects of public work... – [T.J. McNamara,
‘Oddities abound in impressive displays’, New Zealand
Herald, April 7 2004]
... perhaps the best installation is arrived at unexpectedly
in a remote corner at the New Gallery.
Confronting a space painted grey and lit with strip
lighting, humming with obsolete computers and dangling
wires, it momentarily looks as if the door has been left
open to the gallery workstation. The room is redolent
with industrial importance, some post-apocalypse energy
center with the machines still ticking over. The mystery
that is et al., New Zealand’s secretive artist or artists’
group maintains the enigmatic gesture ... – [Jennifer
Purvis, Flash Art International no 236, May 20, 2004]
... One of the most powerful installations is the work by
“et al.” ... The work comprises several metal units which
appear to be discarded, some still containing obscure
files and others with small computers attached, recording
the activity of the units or people associated with the
units. There is a dull sound suggesting emptiness and
distance and odd pieces of text suggesting hospitalised
individuals. The artist has created visual equivalents
of the unknown, making the work disconcerting, and there
is a sense of impending doom as if it were the anteroom
to the afterlife. – [John Daly-Peoples, ‘Fine arts:
Restricted show still offers snapshot of modern arts’ ,
National Business Review, NZ, 29 April 2004]
Then there is et al., whose installation is typically
challenging. With its suggestions of some kind of
creepy Cold War-era intelligence system, it’s one of
the few works in the show that explores surveillance in
a genuinely dystopic way. – [Anthony Byrt, ‘Too much’,
The Listener, NZ, April 24-30 2004]
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Possibility #4
We could call this approach ‘theory et al...’. According
to a text from the fundamental practice (2005) the
collective proposed:
We must clearly distinguish between the truth of an expectation
or a hypothesis and its certainty; and therefore
between two ideas: the idea of truth and the idea of
certainty; or, as we may also say, between truth and
certain truth – for example, a mathematically demonstrable
truth. There is much truth in much of our knowledge,
but little certainty. We must approach our hypotheses
critically; we must test them as severely as we can, in
order to find out whether they cannot be shown to be
false after all.
The fact that we pick and choose from a constant
proliferation of data, hypotheses and ideas to bolster
– nay, come to terms with - our very existence, is a
basic premise behind the role played by texts, voices
and images in an et al. installation. The projects
draw attention to and comment on the ideologies and
orthodoxies we, perhaps unwittingly, are conditioned by:
they explore the nature of truth and meaning, question
notions of ‘witnessing’, and critique fundamentalist
tendencies.
And there’s always the dead grey room, a zone of sorts, with
its cacophony of preaching voices, orchestrated noise,
a blurring of words, music and texts stuttering across
wonky screens, often ill-registered and deliberately
distorted. Orations, citations, go hand in hand with a
fundamental fact: our freedom to choose what we wish to
see and hear. But given the all-powerful media we are
subjected to on a daily basis, our utter susceptibility
to bureaucratic controls and our gullibility to all forms
of visual/ mental imaging, these strange set-ups with
their flickering electronic displays, persuasive voices
and slapdash but insightful signboards, the question is
posed: just how free can we be?
There’s always a fine line between sense and non-sense.
Like Alice’s journey through the looking glass where
the White Queen advises Alice to practise believing six
impossible things before breakfast each day, recent et
al. projects suggest a similar adventurous approach. As
with the 4 C’s already mentioned, mnemonically-inclined
sets of ‘fundamentals’ or recitations allude to the
principles of rote learning and are a playful reminder of
the need to redress confronting socio-political ills of
today. The recent project the fundamental practice, for
example, focused on a number of enigmatic but supposedly
self-improving mantra: The Thirteen Grievous Failures;
The Fifteen Weaknesses; The Twelve Indispensable Things;
The Ten Useless Things; The Ten Self-Imposed Troubles;
The Ten Things where One does Good for Oneself; The Ten
Best Things; The Ten Grievous Mistakes; The Ten Necessary
Things; The Ten Unnecessary Things; The Ten Causes of
Regret; The Ten Things to be Done; The Ten Things to
be Avoided; The Ten Things not to be Avoided; The Ten
Things One must Know; The Ten Things to be Practised;
The Ten Errors.
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Possibility #5
‘La Nuova Voce. Issue 517: The time of your redemption has
arrived...’. Time to face the music: says the group in
unison. Soundtracks have always played a crucial role and
increasingly so in recent projects such as simultaneous
invalidations: first & second attempts (2000 & 2001);
serial_reform_ 713L (2002); the second practice (2004);
restricted access (2004); the fundamental practice
(2005).
Indeed, voice is an encapsulating component of the Venice
Biennale installation. Sited in rooms off the courtyard
of La Pietà, the investigation incorporates belief
systems, scientific theories and traditions of art. And
as the cranking structures and competing soundtracks
finally reach their rapturous crescendo, there’s a faint
echo of a distant past – it is said that this place was
once the home of an orphans choir.
Music, it is said, is about keeping the soul in tune. As
ethno-musicologists point out, ‘the collective function
of music in ritual and ceremony contributes to the
continuity and stability of cultures - singing (and
dancing) draw people together, synchronising emotions,
bonding the group in empathy and reflection or in
preparation for action.’ (see Paul Broks, ‘Review 7’,
The Australian Financial Review, 2 September 2005).
Beyond language and intellect, the power of music derives
from an emotional need for communication with other
humans that is prior to the need for conveying objective
information or exchanging ideas. As the writer Paul
Broks suggests:
Music goes deeper: it perfuses the body. It oils the
wheels of our most primitive mental machineries, those
systems of emotion, bodily sensation and action that
constitute the “core self” - the embodied self of the
present moment. Without coherence at this level there is
no possibility of developing a stable personal identity
or social relationships. Perhaps that’s one of the
basic functions of music: to tune the engines of selfawareness.
Looking at the mechanics and listening to the soundtracks
that make up the fundamental practice in light of the
above, it’s easy to make sense of the collective’s most
recent orchestration. We could call this, ‘On installation
art...’. The artists once suggested installation art
was about tying the personal with the physical and the
technological to create an assemblage of memory, place
and time. An activity, they said, it’s about making
relationships, not setting up polarities:
... these installed concoctions are open systems. They
take in energy. They will never be in equilibrium...
What matters [in the work] is being there as part of the
constantly changing relationships created between the
audience and the seting. That this experience can be an
assault, a massage or an unsettling combination of both
is part of an evolving contract between the work and
its participants. (from an interview with L Budd et al.
by Jim and Mary Barr first published in the exhibition
catalogue Toi Toi Toi: Three generations of artists
from New Zealand, Kassel, Museum Fridericianum, 1999,
p 123.)
More recently the installations indulge in what one
writer called ‘sensory overload’, drawing attention to
the discordant soundtracks, imperfectly painted walls,
visible wiring, outdated and mismatched apparatus.
Yet despite their chaotic appearance, there is a very
particular, albeit idiosyncratic, aesthetic. There is a
calculated and obvious finesse to the technological and
systematic programming that ensures the ‘chaos’ operates
efficiently, effectively. ‘Dysfunction’ indeed, it’s
all a matter of disguise – a magical sleight-of-hand
with the artists / creators far from sight, where the
machinery is left to play on regardless. It’s a world
where, seemingly, reason has given way to mania, it’s
an encounter with an array of complex circuitry and
all-pervasive audio-visual systems – an encapsulation
of ever-encroaching networks (the entangling webs of
our time) and societal fears. As always, et al. are
describing the condition our condition is in.