How to do the important stuff Throughout our days we are doing a great many things. Naturally we tend to see at least some of them as important. I take art, its production so as its criticism, playfulness so as affectivity, its plurality but also certain (though illusory) universalism as utterly important; and other people take completely different things to be essential or pressing. But what makes these things important, is it their allurement, our individual preferences, or just a shared pretention such as their exchangeability for money? Or is it all of these things together? And the problem is even more pressing in respect to art. In the age when not only artworks but even artists themselves are mass produced – what is important to do? I think there might be something more, a certain peculiarity to the fact that something matters to me. Because we simply need to consider our existence meaningful and thus we need to do the important stuff – whatever it may be. But how do we recognize that the thing we are doing is actually important? What does it mean to make a difference? Naturally you need to come out with something, or someone new. There has to be something happening, some contact, change or meeting going on. Particularly in the case of art; entering a gallery, reflecting an artwork you have to face someone different and interesting. That is what happens when you meet Ninna Berger or when you face her work. She works with peculiar stem on beauty and form, but you will always feel something deeper, a place where you can get to know her stories, affections and even herself. She is always working with very distinctive material, reused fabric or cloth, but it is not just an environmental concern or formal feature, it allows you to delve into the material, into its folds and colour tones or hues. She comes to Prague and she visits lots of other places not only to make an exhibition but to make acquaintance, to meet you, to talk to you. Each artwork is a piece of story told and unfinished - piece of fabric meant to be used for breaking glass, a porcelain horse bought in 80’, old satin bed sheet never used, feathers bought by her grandmother, remnant from a performance with Quiltland, all these are coming together to form a thick landscape of affections and narratives. When Ninna visited our studio at Umprum she told the students among many other stimulating things that whatever they are doing they should push the issues, that by any means they form and narrate a story within their work, and that they should embrace and use all the options they have in such respect. Hence, in the course of the presentation we have learnt not only about her I think we learnt how to do the important stuff. We all presume the stuff we do is important, but what really really is important is the intersection of these things, emotions and narrations. Particularly in todays world with all its crises what is at issue is to issue a shared stories. But we need to escape the narrow limits of humanism. What matters is to talk about matter. We need to extend the notion of meeting or understanding or even thinking in order to encompass various materialities. We need to realize it is not only people who are important. That is how we can really make the important stuff – to make the stuff important.
|
|
Things I love
I want to tell you about all the hideous strange and terrible things that have happened Things come and go. There are small ones and important ones. But how do we actually realize which are the important ones. I consider art and all the variety of its forms as utterly important; but most of the people value completely different things. Are there some things important independently from our tastes and preferences, outside of our shared pretensions or their economical value? Maybe it is precisely their plurality a differences what makes them important. To make a differences means to articulate the difference and to bring about something new, something fresh, some import. Its better to be yourself than a poor version of someone else Important things are therefore not only personal, they are important because they are personal, based on our sensitivity and openness to the different. These are the things of Ninna Berger, opening new ways of affection and narration. She works with peculiar stem on beauty and form, but you will always feel something deeper, a place where you can get to know her stories, affections and even herself. She is always working with very distinctive material, reused fabric or cloth, but it is not just an environmental concern or formal feature, it allows you to delve into the material, into its folds and colour tones or hues. You were sleeping and dreaming about an artwork. But what is important particularly today, in the age of mass production and mass extinction, ever increasing wealth and poverty - we can really make the important stuff when we make the stuff important. We need to widen our narrow anthropocentric view. We are not simply humans, we are becoming other-like, we are living–with rather then just subsisting (Gilles Deleuze - Donna Haraway). There are different objects and materials around us, they have their own being, their own stories. Ninna Berger, in a very sympoetic way, gives a voice to these; piece of fabric meant to be used for breaking glass, a porcelain horse bought in 80’, old satin bed sheet never used, feathers bought by her grandmother, remnants from a performance with Quiltland, all these are coming together to form a thick landscape of affections and narratives. things I love Sometimes I feel myself like a character from one of her stories. Sometimes I feel we should enter the fictitious and leave the serious, oppressive existence behind. I call that a minorstition, becoming a minoritarian (Gilles Deleuze - Franz Kafka). To delve into our differences. To evade the presence in order to be truly present. Maybe it is through becoming fictive, that means becoming narrated and narrating, that we actually acquire attention and importance. That is how Ninna works with fabric and diverse materials. They are not controlled or subjugated (by artist intention); she treats them as the important stuff or even as friends. They have their personal histories and relevancy precisely in the moment when we delve into their folds and shades. One day I’ll grow up, I’ll be a beautiful woman Fiction, Reality and Dreams they come from a common source, they have a single mother. So as we make sense out of reality in diverse narrations and affections we may invest our imagination in what is possible, virtual or even dream-like (Gilles Deleuze – Marcel Proust). Reality is full of surfaces and stones. What we need to do, particularly in art, is to turn these stones in order to see the thriving life beneath, to give voice the different, the material. Heart is where the home is |