The Poetics of a Palm Tree

I've long admired the work of Yto Barrada, so was pleased to hear that she is part of the new group show at Tate Modern's Level 2 Gallery, I Decided Not to Save The World. In an approach perhaps similar to that of Francis Alys, the artists in the show look at such topics as cultural identity, territory and globalisation by way of what could be considered gestures, small interventions that have larger implications. For me Barrada's work was the best contribution here, with a body of work that focuses on the palm tree as a symbol for modernisation in her native Tangier, its usage by thegovernment as a symbol to attract tourism. Barrada produced a fanzine that was first distributed at the Third Marrakech Biennial and here displayed in its entirety in poster form. Her film Beau Geste shows workers attempting to save the life of a palm tree on a vacant plot of the land that has been sabotaged in order that it might fall down - it is illegal to cut down a palm tree, and so in order to stop the owner of the land developing on it Barrada explains how these people have set about to save the tree and thus disrupt his plans. A simple gesture it may be, Barrada highlights the resistance that can occur in the face of a modernising and globalising economy.

Images from here.

Collecting

Broodthaers's deep attraction to the forms of the outmoded has been remarked upon by his various critics. His system of references focuses mainly on the nineteenth century, be they to the Ingres or Courbets in the first manifestation of his museum, or to the example of Baudelaire and Mallarmé for his books and exhibitions, or to the panorama and the winter garden as his models for social spaces. In fact, as Benjamin Buchloh has commented, this "altogether dated aura of nineteenth century bourgeois culture that many of his works seem to bring to mind might easily seduce the viewer into dismissing his work as being obviously obsolete and not at all concerned with the presuppositions of contemporary art."

But what Crimp is suggesting is that the power Walter Benjamin invested in the outmoded should be acknowledged in the Broodthaers's use of it - as in his assumption of the form of the "true" collector. This was a power Benjamin hoped his own prospecting in the historical grounds of the nineteenth century forms would be able to release. Writing of his own Paris Arcades project, he said: "We are here constructing an alarm clock that awakens the kitsch of the past century into 're-collection.'" That Benjamin's archaeology was retrospective was a function of the fact that he believed its view could open up only from the site of obsolescence. As he remarked: "Only in extinction is the [true] collector comprehended."

Rosalind Krauss - "A Voyage on the North Sea", p.42

Images of Marcel Broodthaers's Un jardin d'hiver, 1974. Top image from here, which is quite fun!

Message in a bottle

This gargantuan painting by Peter Doig has just been unveiled at Tate Britain, palm trees must be in vogue! His painting is entitled Ascension and was originally shown at Westminster Cathedral last year, as a backdrop to a performance by pianist Stephen Hough. Today I constructed my own 8ft palm tree out of cardboard tubes and newsprint paper and ventured out into the streets of central London with it, will post the photos of the results soon...

I happened to be at Tate Britain this evening (although too late to see the painting, as the galleries were closed) for a debate on multiculturalism in art, centred around the latest piece of work to be unveiled on the fourth plinth, Yinka Shonibare's "Nelson's Ship in a Bottle". The debate ended up focusing on the way we articulate the notions of ethnic minorites and race relations, and particularly whether positive discrimination is a good thing, raised controversially by the author of this article and sparking heated discussion. I'm yet to see the rather impressive looking sculpture, but the critics seem unanimous in praise for its ambiguous subversion of and/or celebration of empire.

Seeking the unknown

I've been thinking a lot recently about the 'romanticised other', the way we idealise places foreign to those we know, and the ways in which these places come to be a part of our own lives, be it subconsciously or in other more overt forms, such as the media, or through the imagery we are bombarded with daily. Often we yearn for these places for reasons we can't quite put a finger on, be it a desire for a taste of foreign cultures or an urge to discover the proverbial 'unknown'. These feelings can manifest themselves in different forms; take, for example, the palm tree, planted proudly in many suburban front gardens and around grey, urban environments, they symbolise the distant, the faraway land, injecting that little bit of tropical island paradise into the sometimes dreary reality of British life. The humble palm tree is a symbol of globalisation, of the post-colonial society that we live in, and moreover a symbol of the desire for the unknown, the other.

The palm tree is also a great symbol of that most infamous of American cities, Los Angeles. Like many of the inhabitants of the city the palm tree is not a native, and the first ones were brought to the city around the turn of the twentieth century.

The city holds one of those unexplainable interests over me, something about the legacy left by artists like Ed Ruscha and David Hockney and the way Hollywood filters through into our upbringing despite the fact we live half way around the world from it. Don't get me wrong, nothing about the artificiality and celebrity culture of the past decade interests me greatly, it is more an idealised, I guess you could say, fixation on a city that no longer exists, a distant, romanticised past when modernism was still new and California Girls was first being played on the radio.

To make artwork around the concept of the unknown, the desired other, is an interesting one that can throw up much discussion, and is something that has possessed artists for many centuries. For some, like Hockney, for example, the fixation reaches the point where fulfilment of the longing must take place, there is a need to experience the culture first hand. Alternatively what may be interesting is the very making of work about a culture that has not been experienced first hand, and is merely interpreted, experienced, through the images and media we receive in the comfort of our own home. In either case, we just might learn something about why we are so fixated on these places in the first place.

If you have a spare fifteen minutes, this is worth a watch.

(Photos screendumped from here)

Palm