International Congress of Aesthetics 2007 Aesthetics Bridging Cultures. Vladimir Arkhipov: art and artefact

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1 International Congress of Aesthetics 2007 Aesthetics Bridging Vladimir Arkhipov: art and artefact Dr Mark Haywood, Centre for Landscape & Environmental Arts Research, University of Cumbria Introduction Most contemporary artists live and work in cities, and there is often an unspoken assumption that contemporary art made in a rural context will inevitably be a diluted, or parochial version of that made in the metropolis. However when viewed from the other end telescope one soon realises that rural areas in countries on opposite sides of Europe or Asia may have more in common with each other than they do with their local cities. Furthermore they can generate and sustain radically different forms of contemporary art practice. Figure 1, Vladimir Arkhipov catalogue cover (detail) County Clare, Ireland, 2006 I will begin by describing the unusual art making strategies of Russian artist Vladimir Arkhipov, whose recent project with remote rural communities on the West coast of Ireland is an excellent demonstration of the internationality of what Reuben and Maja Fowkes have dubbed the trans-local. 1 My aesthetic analysis of Arkhipov s work originated in an exploratory dialogue with Fiona Woods, curator of his 2006 project in the west of Ireland. 2 I now aim to develop these ideas further by considering the shifting aesthetic status of the artefacts with which Arkhipov works and contextualise his practice, both in terms of historical precedent and in relation to the work of other present day artists.

2 Figure 2, Big Filter from Vladimir Arkhipov, Functioning Forms Ireland, 2006 Vladimir Arkhipov creates temporary collections of unique contraptions that people have made by recycling, or cannibalising other artefacts. These objects are practical (or sometimes endearingly impractical) low cost, home-made, design solutions symptomatic of a practice once found everywhere, but which far less common in Western cultures, where such home-made devices are largely confined to economically deprived rural, or immigrant communities. Arkhipov s white box gallery exhibitions consist of groups of these items that he has gathered from a common locale, or region; they are displayed alongside photographs of them in their normal, everyday context. Also exhibited with the artefacts and photographs are Arkhipov s transcripts of the makers accounts of the circumstances that prompted them to make their creations. After being exhibited the artefacts are returned to the owners and Arkhipov s documentation is added to his ongoing art project, The Post-Folk Archive. 2

3 An obvious twentieth century art historical starting point from which to begin consideration of Arkhipov s practice are the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp. In the present context Bottlerack seems more appropriate than the Fountain, as it remained physically unaltered, whereas the latter was displayed in a horizontal position rather than its more customary vertical one. Fountain was also creatively re-titled and the famous signature R Mutt conspicuously added. Whilst the much later limited edition Bottlerack that survve today have Duchamp s signature, date and edition number, I am uncertain if he artist signed the original - if not this was a further useful distinction between Bottlerack and Fountain. Duchamp s early ready-mades went missing after he went to America and left the contents of his studio in the care of his sister (a cautionary lesson for all artists). Whilst Duchamp later felt it quite possible to remake a ready-made from new material, it is less clear if at the time he regarded the art object status of the originals as being permanent and irreversible. Certainly the transferability of the concept to a replacement artefact, hints at the possibility that if an artist could make a work of art by naming, he could later unmake it by un-naming? By contrast the attitude of Duchamp s painter-sister appears quite unequivocal as she threw away her brother s ready-mades when tidying up his studio. Figure 3, Post-Folk Archive, TV antenna from forks, Moscow,

4 In light of the above uncertainty one of the most significant ways in which Arkhipov s practice differs from that of Duchamp is that after being exhibited the artefacts are deliberately returned to their owners and resume their original function. However despite the artist s intentions and the fact that the artefacts remain physically unaltered, by being exhibited in the above manner they have acquired a provenance which has altered them in a way that may be irreversible. A useful way to consider this is that they have undergone a form of Cambridge change. This term was coined by Geach to mark its employment by Cambridge philosophers such as Russell and McTaggart. 3 Mortenson describes this device as usually employing a meta-language to describe change in the descriptions applied to a thing, whose physical attributes may otherwise be unaltered. 4 Figure 4. Arkhipov, Post-Folk Archive, Spoon with hole, Rryazan, Russia, Later in his account Mortenson uses the phrase real metaphysical change, which is a potentially useful adjunct to what I have described as their acquiring an auratic provenance (Haywood & Woods, 2006:3). Walter Benjamin s aura is an ironic concept in this context as their having been exhibited and documented by Arkhipov may well imbue them with new economic value, particularly in the ever-voracious art market. One can imagine this being perversely heightened by the artist s customary practice being an intentional disengagement from the market. Hopefully at present this remains a theoretical issue, because one of the many satisfying aspects of Arkhipov s work is the manner in which his practice elegantly sidesteps what the late Jean Baudrillard described as the nullity that has come to characterise so many contemporary art works unique commodities whose prime purpose Baudrillard argued, was simply to inflate their own economic value. 5 Nevertheless despite these artefacts potential economic value on the international art market, I would prefer not to describe them as art objects, Firstly because they were not created as such and thus lack intentionality, and whilst Arkhipov has exhibited them in 4

5 art galleries, this does not automatically confer on them the status of art because Arkhipov has not reassigned them to the category of art in the manner that Duchamp did. Secondly because unlike Duchamp s ready-mades, these artefacts resume their previous existence; therefore rather than there being a sculptural art object, the art resides in Arkhipov s act of curation and his ongoing compilation of the Post-Folk Archive. Figure s Commodity Art : left. Jeff Koons; right. Haim Steinbach. The aesthetic location of these artefacts lies elsewhere - it would seem we have some form of transaesthetic object however this term has been used in other contexts by (Baudrillard 2005) so I d prefer to avoid it. Perhaps we can follow the lead given by our conference organisers who helpfully assigned my paper to the folk-art session, thereby further suggesting the philosophically separating Arkhipov s actions as a contemporary artist from those of the people who create the artefacts with which he works. We might thereby draw possible comparisons with other artists who have represented ready-mades such as the work of so-called commodity artists, Jeff Koons and Haim Steinbach in the mid 1980s (fig. 5). Though these generally incorporated mass-produced objects, Steinbach has also have included unique objects such as this tasteful piece of driftwood. Koons is recorded as having replaced one of his pristine vacuum cleaners after it was sullied by a gallery cleaner who mistakenly used the machine for its original purpose. In light of these precedents and that of Duchamp, we can begin to separate the aesthetics of Arkhipov s conceptual art making from that of the physical artefacts used in the creation of his art work. I now wish to turn to these artefacts with which Arkhipov works and then conclude with a brief look at a contemporary British artist whose work seems to fuse what, for me are usually otherwise discrete aesthetic realms. 5

6 Figure 6. Vladimir Arkhipov, Post-Folk Archive chair-stool, Stolptsi, near Rryazan, Russia, 1995 Sometimes the artefacts Arkhipov documents raise pose surreal questions as to their purpose, such as the spoon with a hole (fig.4); at other times it is one of category chair or stool? However in all instances I would suggest their form and appearance of the artefacts in Arkhipov s Archive originate in a functionalist design philosophy, which appears rather different to the functionalist design aesthetic associated with proponents of Bauhaus modernism. However one can argue that the formers general absence of a formal, visually informed design aesthetic places them closer to the sentiments of the famous maxim function dictates form than its Bauhaus orginators. The late Peter Dormer, who I believe to have been one of Britain s more deep thinking design historians, once told me he 6

7 believed function dictates form was a slogan from a styling manifesto, rather than the enunciation of a coherent, functionalist design philosophy. However despite these variations in the aesthetics of functionalism, there is possibly some common ground shared by the items in the Folk-Archive and certain design prototypes; consideration of these similarities may allow to shed may shed a little light on the other. The example that sprang most readliy to mind was Marcel Breuer s Wassily Chair, named after his Bauhaus colleague Wassily Kandinsky, and supposedly inspired by tubing used for bicycle frames. The prototype was constructed from standard copper pipes and brass joints purchased from a plumber s merchants, and we can see how many proportions dictated by the prototype s means of construction fed through into the final form and proportions of the massproduced chair. Figure 7. Marcel Breuer, Wassily Chair. Similarly rather than an idealisation of material and form, the visual appearance and design efficiency of the objects documented by Arkhipov are the product of local economics and the chance availability of suitable items to be cannibalised, together with their creators greatly varying levels of ingenuity, practicality, fabricative skill and technical resources. 7

8 Figure 8, Suckling Feeder from Vladimir Arkhipov, Functioning Forms Ireland, 2006 Although I have made comparison with certain aspects of design, I would prefer not to call term these artefacts design objects. Peter Dormer also made a useful distinction between craft and design, wherein the former tended to emphasise the unique and hand-made, whereas the latter often involved a higher degree of specialised team work, frequently entailing the separation of conception and production. Craft therefore seems a more appropriate category for the artefacts documented by Arkhipov. This is by no means a recent craft, and unlike many, more conventional craft forms, does not have a consistent emphasis on skill of fabrication. There is however a characteristic left of field thinking, which whilst attractive to artists, may be regarded by applied artists, or designers as spanning a spectrum of design solutions, from the impractically whimsical or incompetent, to the downright obtuse or functionally perverse. By locating them in a category other than art I believe that even when 8

9 temporarily re-contextualised in the art gallery, they do not become art objects as the art resides in Arkipov s acts of curation and archiving. Not being art does not prevent these artefacts from becoming increasingly complex objects capable of generating a wide range of aesthetic responses. Figure 9, Peat cutter s barrow, from Vladimir Arkhipov, Functioning Forms Ireland, 2006 The Post-Folk Archive bridges different cultures that share common conditions of marginalisation and economic deprivation. It has been suggested the artefacts documented are quietly subverting consumer culture 6, but I would argue the reverse: far from threatening capitalist mass-production, they are threatened by it. In affluent societies characterised by increasingly technically complex consumer items, which are increasingly frequently cheaper to replace than to repair, the artefacts documented by Arkhiphov are an endangered species. However there are at least two possible ways in which they could acquire a new relevance. The first is an increasingly desirable, ecologically driven aesthetic of individual, user-generated alternatives to mass-produced solutions. 9

10 Figure 10, Woodshed at Schweizerhalle used by Simon Starling for Shedboatshed: Mobile Architecture no.2, A second possibility is suggested by their parallels to contemporary artworks such as 2005 Turner Prize winner, Simon Starling s work, best known by its abbreviated title Shedboatshed. At the time of the award English art critic William Feaver described Starling's practice as founded on transformation and reconstruction, the interplay of references, cultural correspondences, and geographical shifts. 7 However another review at the time by Jasper Sharp reminds us of the usefulness of the concept of Cambridge change ; Sharp wrote that in Starling s work new objects are not created, but rather new relationships between existing objects. 8 Starling s nomination for the Turner Prize was a result of his 2005 installation Shedboatshed: Mobile Architecture no.2. This work began with the artist finding a large, somewhat ramshackle woodshed on the banks of the Rhine at Schweizerhalle; it belonged to a local boat club and had a paddle mounted on the outside wall. Figure 11. Simon Starling, Shedboatshed: Mobile Architecture no.2, Weidling with the rest of the dismantled woodshed being rowed to Basel 10

11 Starling dissembled the shed and used some of its planks to build a Weidling, a traditional style of local boat. The remainder of the shed was loaded onto the boat and paddled eleven kilometres down the Rhine to Basel, where he was about to have a retrospective exhibition at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst. Inside the museum the various elements were reassembled back into the original shed and exhibited. Figure 12. Simon Starling, Shedboatshed: Mobile Architecture no.2, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Starling is an extremely competent exponent of the sort of practices documented in the Post-Folk Archive. and I find him a interesting counterpart to the work of Arkhipov. Both artists raise interesting questions about the nature of art and artefact, but much as I value and treasure the earnest nerdy wit and cleverness of Starling, I am ultimately drawn to the collaborative work of Arkhipov, which is returned to the world rather than remaining in the white cube of the international art market. Furthermore by his strategy of collaboratively recording a much wider range of experience and collaboration from beyond the art world, Arhkipov s oeuvre has an endless capacity to surprise and delight. For me part of this attraction lies in the fact that one is not simply admiring the cleverness of an individual artist, but the wit and ingenuity of humankind in general. One can only speculate as to whether Moscow janitor who crafted this shovel from a road sign had read the works of Ferdinand de 11

12 Saussure, but his creation certainly generates interesting new conjunction of sign, signifier and signified. It is also possible the janitor was unfamiliar with the work of Marcel Duchamp 9. However given the weather conditions apparent in Arkhipov s photograph I will conclude observing that we can be absolutely certain the Moscow janitor shovelled snow with this home-made shovel. Figure 13. Left: Vladimir Arkhipov, Post-Folk Archive, janitor s shovel. Right: Marcel Duchamp, In Advance of a Broken Arm, snowshovel readymade. Bibliography Baudrillard, Jean, The Conspiracy of Art (New York, Semiotext(e), 2005). Feaver, William, ARTnews v.105 no.2, February 2006, p.148 Geach, P.T., 1969, God and the Soul (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Sharp, Jasper Man vs Nature in Art Review, vol.3, no.12, Dec 2005 / Jan 2006, pp Haywood, Mark and Woods, Fiona, A Shifting Aesthetic in Vladimir Arkhipov: Functioning Forms Ireland, Woods (ed.) (Ennis, Clare County Council, 2006). 12

13 Electronic Sources (avail. 1/7/07) Mortenson, Chris (2006) Change in Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (avail. 30/6/07) 1 Sustainability and Contemporary Art, International Symposium at CEU Budapest March Haywood and Woods, Geach, 1969: Mortenson, Baudrillard, 1996:27 6 Haywood and Woods, 2006:2 7 Feaver, Sharp, 2005:123 9 Neither of these possibilities are as improbable as might first appear. I am very grateful to Greg Dolgopolov for telling me that in Russia there is a long standing tradition of impoverished poets and artists working as janitors. 13