A MINOR RETROSPECTIVE
November 2, 1993

Organized by the members of the FLAT, this exhibition was designed to coincide with Kendall Geers’ first exhibition in Durban. Geers, then a young artist from Johannesburg, was exhibiting an installation of suspended bricks at the Technikon Art Gallery. Indeed this installation referenced an earlier work in which he attached a newspaper clipping that described incidents of violence in South Africa to an ordinary brick.
In a subversive strategy orchestrated by Gainer, Moe, Barry, and myself, works by Geers were photocopied from various catalogues, mounted on masonite squares and presented minimally on the walls of the FLAT. In this way, we set out to orchestrate a faux retrospective of Geers' work.
We printed invitations and put up posters across Durban. When the posters and advertising went out, Geers thought initially that these had originated from the institution that was sponsoring the legitimate exhibition, the Technikon Gallery. He remarked on their quality, thinking that they had been made by Frances van Melsen, the gallery’s curator. The situation grew more complex and hilarious when Van Melsen, was told of the dual exhibition at the FLAT. She mistakenly thought that it was Geers who had prepared the other exhibition, and so announced at his opening, that there was more of his work just across the road at the FLAT. Confusion continued over the authenticity of the FLAT exhibition, with some viewers expressing their preference for the Geers exhibition at the FLAT over the one at the Technikon Gallery.
Also, an unintentional, but strangely appropriate occurrence contributed to the absurdity. In an attempt to remedy our dirty floor at the FLAT, we painted it less than three hours before the opening with fresh, black, enamel floor paint. It did not dry for the opening. The crowds came and stuck to the wet painted floor, while viewing work that no one except the FLAT co-conspirators suspected was not Geers’ work. Upon visiting the exhibition at the FLAT, interestingly, Geers never denied that the FLAT exhibition was a faux exhibition of his work, leaving many viewers with the impression that he had indeed mounted two shows in Durban.

Earlier this year, I interviewed Lola Frost, a lecturer in Art History and Theory at the Technikon. She had been to both exhibitions and unknowingly played a key role in expanding this absurdity.

Allen:               Apparently, you had said to Geers that you thought his installation at the FLAT was much better than the one at the Technikon Gallery?
Frost:               Yes.
Allen:               Did you realise that it wasn’t his work?
Frost:               No.
Allen:               Why did you think the FLAT work was better?
Frost:               I suppose it was much more poetic. Besides the scale of the images and the transgressive act of walking on the wet floor - it seemed to me, in terms of the criteria I was using then, that it was metaphorically loaded. As we know, Kendell’s whole business is to trash that. It is interesting that you, as Durban artists, would have spoken within that poetic frame-work. And of course we have often spoken about that divide between Johannesburg and Durban - the romantic versus the post-modern… if you want to call it that. Which I think that little maneuver was really about.
Allen:               Another thing that I think is quite significant is that when you told him that the FLAT show was better than the Technikon show, he never denied it. He never said it is not my work. He actually thanked you.
Frost:               No, he didn’t deny it.
Allen:               Which I think is an interesting shift as well. He accepted the FLAT exhibition and therefor became part of it. In other words he appropriated it.
Frost:               Which is all part of his cynical agenda.[1]

I also discussed this exhibition with co-conspirator, Carol Gainer, in an e-mail interview. We talked about the importance of the collaborative nature of this project and our move away from ‘art on display’ to a more ‘event’ orientated exhibition.

Allen:               How did this ‘faux exhibition’ come about?
Gainer:            It was an idea of yours to stage a show at the same time as Kendell’s show at the Technikon Gallery (hanging bricks)?
Allen:               Would you say that this was a collaborative event? If so, would you say that it was the first collaboration at the FLAT? Do you think that these ‘subversive’ collaborative efforts at the FLAT were intrinsic in forming its identity as an experimental space?
Gainer:            I do think that this was probably the first “collaboration” we as the FLAT did and this did seem to feed the notion of the FLAT being an experimental space.
Allen:               Can you describe your role in the event?
Gainer:            My role was, at the time, a “bridging”, since I had by then formed a friendship with Kendell and had helped him hang his show at Tech and since he was staying with me he was very aware of “his other show”.
Allen:               To what extent did the chance action of repainting the floor influence the ‘subversive’ meaning of the installation?
Gainer:            The chance act of painting the floor was very important to the reading of the exhibit. In fact I think that the stickiness of the wet paint and the feeling of it under one’s feet and the sound of it was what actually made the exhibit so strong at the time. It certainly shifted the reading of the exhibit.
Allen:               Some viewers like Lola Frost commented that they thought Geers’ “FLAT
Installation” was more interesting than his “Tech. installation”. Geers the true situationist that he is never denied this fact, and too remarked that he thought that his FLAT work was better than his other piece. Leaving many viewers with the impression that he had indeed mounted two shows in Durban.
Gainer:            The fact that Lola made the mistake and Kendell said nothing was also extremely important. Kendell was very aware of being a co-conspirator and that was also what gave the whole event a collaborative feel.[2]

In the discussion between Moe, MacKenny; American artist, Kendall Buster and myself, MacKenny had these comments:

MacKenny:    I remember that show, you had a whole lot of tiny images of his work…
Allen:               And we had just painted the floor and thus it was very sticky.
MacKenny:    Yes, so you were kind of stuck to the floor and it made those sucking noises as you moved around the exhibition. I think it was actually a brilliant idea. [Laughter] Kendell’s exhibition at the NSA was a series of hanging bricks, and I think he was using that chevron tape around the pillars. And there were long discussions with Kendell about whether this was art or not. Some people tried to find metaphors in it and Kendell would say: “No, the enemy of the artist is symbol, metaphor, mood, evocation”… and he literally threw any vocabulary that any artist had used out the window.
Buster:             Funny, I never thought of him as a post-minimalist, truth to materials, kind of guy. Was that a phase he was in?

MacKenny:    No, he even denied that. [Laughter] People were saying, “What about Carl Andre’s bricks?” And he even denied any connection to that.
Allen:               While he was hanging that show, I remember speaking to him and he said one of his sources for the piece was Ad Reinhardt. Which was kind of strange, but which I thought was quite interesting nonetheless.
MacKenny:    I never know whether to believe Kendell when he says those kind of things. I think he could be fucking around. When anyone brought up a connection for example when the work was critiqued in a negative way…some people said this thing only works because it is in South Africa, and Carl Andre did this kind of thing in the 60s and so on. I think he acknowledged it as some sort of reference to the brick in South Africa, that it is both a weapon and a building block. I think he acknowledged that as part of the impetus.
Allen:               He also referenced the idea of hanging bricks from bridge over roadways as a form of terrorism.
MacKenny:    I think he was placing it within a South African context. But when anyone tried to get on any other level, he just pulled away. What it did was create more discussion about what art was, what you believed in, what you had faith in, than any other art exhibition that had happened at the Technikon. Whether you hated it or loved it, what it really generated was intense discussion and that is what was so important. What I liked about the FLAT show, was precisely that, it threw into relief, exactly the same issues. It is interesting…he is a man who thinks on his feet so in that way he did not deny that the false exhibition was his work. He actually let it play out. But the fact that you had initiated it without asking permission. You had in turn appropriated his images. There was a collaborative anonymity in that no single individual took responsibility. That was very much part of the discussion of the FLAT Gallery as well. You were playing games and in a funny kind of way you almost out-Kendelled Kendell. [Laughter] [1]

The performative aspect of this faux exhibition (and the small ‘dramas’ that spun out from it) functioned through a collaborative action. However, perhaps more important was the fact that this action was somewhat conspiratorial and challenged the notions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘reality’. The art on the walls was not ‘real’, and the ‘exhibition’ extended beyond the gallery into the world through an intervention that was subtle and subversive. In a sense, our exhibition ‘conversed’ with Geers’ work not only through the obvious ‘plagiarizing’ of his images, but more importantly through the very tactics that we employed. This seemed resonant with Geers’ own efforts to explore not only form and image, but also context. The radical nature of his work, in other words, functioned not only through the language within the work but also through its ‘behavior’ in the world.
We later came to regard this as the first ‘situationist’ event at the FLAT, and to develop an interest in many of the strategies and concerns articulated by the Situationist movement.[2] Ken Knabb describes in his Situationist anthology the historical details of the movement:

In 1957, a few European avant-garde groups came together to form the Situationist International. Over the next decade the SI developed an increasingly incisive and coherent critique of modern society and of its bureaucratic pseudo-opposition, and its new methods of agitation were influential in leading up to the May 1968 revolt in France. Since then - although the SI itself was dissolved in 1972 - situationist theses and tactics have been taken up by radical currents in dozens of countries all over the world.[3]

In a document for the Situationist International #9 (August 1964), the term is defined:

[Situationist] denotes an activity that aims at making situations as opposed to passively recognizing them in academic or other separate terms… We replace existential passivity with… playful affirmation… Our theories are nothing other than the theory of our real life, of the possibilities experienced or perceived in it.[4]

 

“Playful affirmation” is a term that perhaps best describes spirit of the FLAT’s faux exhibition and the ‘trickster’ tactics. Often employed to bring one’s creative practice into the world and to provoke the public through methods, these are approaches that seek to ‘infiltrate’ or act directly on the institution.

In his biography of Situationist Guy Debord, Len Braken describes a ‘provocation’ by one of the Lettrists.[5] “On an Easter Sunday in 1950, Michel Mourre slipped onto the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral, dressed as a Dominican monk and delivered this sermon written by the Lettrist poet, Serge Berna, to the thousands of people attending the service:

Today Easter of the Holy Year here under the insignia of the Basilica of Notre
Dame de Paris
I accuse
the Universal Catholic Church of the deadly diversion of the force of life in
favor of an empty heaven
I accuse
the Catholic Church of a con job
I accuse
the Catholic Church of infecting the world with its mortuary morality of
being the chancre sore of the decaying Western World
I tell you the truth: God is dead
We vomit the agonizing tastelessness of your prayers because your prayers are
the greasy smoke of the Battlefields of our Europe
Go forth into the tragic and exalted desert of a world where God is dead and
once again till this earth with your bare hands with your PROUD hands
with your unpraying hands

Today Easter of the Holy Year
Here in the Basilica of Notre-Dame de France, we proclaim the death of Jesus
Christ so that at last Man lives.”[6]

 

Though the intention was to create a provocation and a ‘scandal’, one can only wonder how effective such a strategy might had been had he been mistaken for a legitimate monk for the duration of his speech. A performance (or intervention) that does not immediately reveal itself as ‘performance’ offers an opportunity for not only scandal, but also subversion. This was explored through a number of works in Crapshoot; launched in 1996 as part of the curatorial training programme at De Appel in Amsterdam. Geers, an artist participant and fellow South African Clive Kellner, a training curator, were both involved in the project. Indeed, the position of these artists vis a vis situationism is consciously acknowledged by Kellner in the Crapshoot catalogue essay. He speaks here of Geers:

He was born in May 1968 at the time of the Paris student riots, as if this is not enough, he proclaims a line to the Situationist International… Kendall Geers changed his birth date as an artwork, an act of appropriation involving one of the epochs in recent European history, Guy Debord, the critical avant-garde…so the myth making goes on, a compilation of lies, hearsay, and mis-informed journalism. Partly contrived, but mostly true.[7]
     
Geers, with a number of artists such as Italian, Maurizio Cattelan, participated in an exhibition that was built around a number of ‘off site’ artist interventions. One such project instigated by Cattelan, but involving most of the participates, included the illegal activity of breaking into the Bloom Gallery. In the ‘performance’, they first stole the entire contents of the gallery (including the art and the office equipment) in an action titled: Operation Giant Blossum in April 1996, packed it and then redisplayed it in the De Appel exhibition space. The title card read:

Maurizio Cattelan, “Another Fucking Readymade”, April 11 (10:30 a.m.), 1996.
Courtesy Bloom Gallery.
Contents of Bloom Gallery including Paul de Reus exhibition and office equipment.
Situated on second floor of De Appel, following the action “Operation Giant Blossom”,
April 11 (7:00 - 7:40 a.m.), 1996.[8]

According to Saskia Bos, the head curator at De Appel, the curatorial staff at De Appel was not aware of the project. She spoke in conversation with Otto Berchem about the complexity of the experience and begins by telling about the initial call from her assistant:

She said, “I have to tell your something. They’ve broken into the Bloom Gallery… this is impossible. The police are involved” etc. I had this meeting and I knew I couldn’t do anything, then I went to De Appel and we discussed the whole thing with Cattelan. What I wanted to hear were the content arguments, the real artistic reasons why he did it. He spoke about what I would say was appropriation and the need to make that appropriation in reality, and the need to bring something into another space, from one space to another. I remember asking myself, over and over, why he had not written a letter to ask if he could bring the show from one place to another, why didn’t he involve them consciously, willingly, knowingly. He said, “No, because I had to transgress this line. I have to do something without their consent.” It was the surprise that he was interested in. It was a pretty calm meeting because I wanted it to be calm. The excitement of it was already big enough with the others. So we really discussed, for hours, about “why did you leave the note. ‘Don’t worry. Everything is OK. You will see everything again soon.’ Why didn’t you leave another kind of note?”[9]

Indeed, the importance of an action done without ‘permission’ is articulated here. Kellner, in discussing Geers speaks to this:

The institution provides the frame or context for these gestures, as radical as they may be. It is the institution which appears to grant permission to the gesture. Partly this is hugely problematic, as there is nothing worse than being given ‘permission’ to break or destroy some fascinating object.[10]

Also, for Crapshoot, Geers ‘constructed’ an installation that marked a return to the use of the brick. The ‘sculpture’, an empty gallery room with a broken window and a brick on the floor was ‘constructed’ by the artist throwing a brick through the De Appel gallery window. Saskia Bos on Geers’ Title Withheld (Brick) 1996 at De Appel says:

I think Kendell Geers’ brick through the window is the strongest of the ‘broken works’. It relates to the street, it’s a clear message, in one room, it’s absolutely an icon for hate, or aggression towards an institution.[11]

This work is in fact a remake of an earlier work, Title Withheld (Brick) 1994, at the Market Gallery in Johannesburg and is also mentioned by Hazel Friedman in her critique of the show in the STAR Tonight.

Geers obsesses about South Africa’s pathology of violence, demonstrated by throwing a brick through the window of the Market Gallery – a throwback to a previous work bought by the Johannesburg Art Gallery – and incorporating the brick, the gaping hole and shards of glass into the artwork.[12]

Both the Market and the De Appel works, are examples of ‘simulated violence’. And indeed the ‘simulated experience’ is an effective strategy employed to question both the viewer’s notion of ‘reality’ and the institution’s role as a neutral ‘white cube’. The viewer enters the exhibition and encounters a situation that is not as it appears. Whether that encounter is with what first seems to be an act of vandalism against that institution, as at De Appel, or an exhibition that creates confusion over authorship, as in the FLAT, the question is still asked, “Is this a reality or a simulation?”