Sept 21 to Nov 30

Ricardo Basbaum

la société du spectacle (& NBP)

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Project for the Kunstraum Lakeside, Klagenfurt

The project “la société du spectacle (& NBP)” proposes a temporary intervention at the Kunstraum Lakeside space, using some of the visual tools I have been employing in my recent work. The purpose is to point to some of the aspects present in the actual relation between art, culture and the new economy, trying to recognize some role for contemporary art in the current situation—not only in terms of the art practice but also thinking of the different roles taken by the artist (agent, writer, critic, curator, …) and the consequent ‘image of the artist.’

The title “la société du spectacle (& NBP)” is clearly an overstatement, in the sense of indicating how the sentence coined by Guy Debord is now a commonplace, a sort of ‘landscape.’ One is conscious of inhabiting and moving within such an environment, permeated by ‘spectacle logistics’; there is the need to institute some form of resistance to it, react and produce the necessary distance that can permit the development of different strategies.

This is a situation that has already prevailed during the last 20 years, at least. I just want to highlight, from the viewpoint of my artwork—my strategies of working as an artist—some aspects of organizing this field of action. This gesture is in itself a collective one, as no artist can exist and work as an isolated individual: any art proposal displays connections, networks, rhizomes, etc. The open program NBP has been established as a mode of reacting through an intervention in this landscape, establishing my platform as an artist, which takes as its point of departure an emphasis on ‘communication,’ ‘contamination’ and affection in relation to contemporary art as a tool for acting on the public sphere. So, “la société du spectacle (& NBP)” offers a small set of interventions in our daily 21st century landscape using the typical NBP project’s “boîte à outils conceptuelle.”

The proposed intervention is composed of three elements: (1) a metal structure posited outside the Kunstraum, creating a ‘door before the door’; (2) a wall diagram on monochromatic background located inside the room, where a map is proposed with lines, images and words; (3) a closed-circuit camera system where a series of four images framing the installation is repeated continuously, indicating another sensorial layer to relate to the Kunstraum, its structures and the installation.

(1) Metal structure: The architectonic/sculptural structure outside is meant to work as a membrane that mediates the outside/inside flux from the surrounding space into the Kunstraum and vice-versa. It offers two different doors previous to the regular entrance door, obliging any visitor to make a gesture of choosing how to enter (or not) the space. Then one of the doors points to a more specific situation, when it conducts the visitor into a ‘compulsory performance’: the body is required to perform the crossing of a specially shaped door and a small (20 cm high) floor obstacle. Here, the subject’s body is called on to conflate proprioception and aesthetic experience.

(2) Diagram: Words and images are brought together in a cartographic and diagrammatic exercise that integrates over the monochrome surface (affective intensity) elements of subjective and collective performance: ‘me’ and ‘you’ (subject and object) are related to different sets of words, articulated by lines and graphic elements. Most of the words and images are directly extracted from the Lakeside project’s advertising material and website, pointing to the actual convergence of vocabulary between art, culture and the immaterial economy, with references to affective and synergetic relations. This vocabulary is permeated in the diagram by internal references to the NBP project, naming some of the specific projects that constitute stages of its development. In that sense this diagram is also a comment on my art projects and their strategies, pointing to their actual state and possible unfoldings.

(3) Cameras: I used to call the set of four black-and-white cameras and sequencer that frame the installation, displaying the images in the open space of the room, “system cinema.” Certain aspects are important here: (a) the frames permit access to certain angles of the installation that are not reached by the eye, so the perception of the space through the cameras is mixed with the direct presence inside the installation; (b) the hypnotic repetition of the four images creates a sort of labyrinthine duplication of the actual installation space: at the same time that certain areas are spotted by the cameras, others are recognized as shadow are as, not scanned by the lenses; (c) the presence of the cameras reinforces some sort of autonomy of the installation – not a formal, but a critical and ‘managerial’ (in the sense of an ‘economy of the meaning’) one – which projects on the work a self-awareness layer that ‘protects’ it from certain standard forms of assimilation and points to an involvement based on ‘contact zones’; (d) the images from the cameras are also meant to provide material for the next possible works.

“la société du spectacle (& NBP)” creates an active sensorial dynamic involving the visitor in a productive and intensive process.
Ricardo Basbaum

Ricardo Basbaum, born 1961 in Sao Paulo, lives in Rio de Janeiro. He teaches at the art faculty of the State University in Rio and works as an artist, author, critic and curator.

Sabeth Buchmann is an art historian and critic living in Berlin and Vienna. She is Professor for the History of Modern and Post-Modern Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.