R. Ganahl – English

RAINER GANAHL: COMUNICATION & POWER

Rainer Ganahl studied philosophy and politics and trained as a plastic artist with Peter Weibel at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna, and with Nam June Paik at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. In 1990, Ganahl carried out the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in New York, where he currently lives. His work, which can be branded conceptual, is not only based on plastic arts.

In fact, his writings, many of which appear as interviews an features (a good part of this material is available on the Internet), cover different issues that revolve around the idea that supports his artistic work: to expose the discourses that are used to represent reality and reveal the representations of political-social and media power.

In the Nineties, Ganahl started to make his name with a series of mural works that reproduced the iconography of computer programmes. It was not a case of using computers as “new media” –which was, on the other hand, quite appropriate at that time-, but of using them as a metaphor of the biased way in which knowledge is presented. For this work, the artist represented the computer monitor as if it were part of the wall and reproduced specific word processing functions: “cut”, “copy”, ”delete”…Or, more explicitly, he used parts of indices or bibliographies of books: “Production: industrial, internationalisation, social relations, space”, ”Issues concerning Geography/Berger, “Issues concerning Geography/Foucault, “Ethnic and racial groups,” etc like in a mural painting Ganahl created at the Gallerie R. Pailhas in Paris in 1993. On one hand, this allowed Ganahl to show how the text, like all forms of knowledge, is not lineal and can be articulated using disparate and unconnected elements (copy, paste, delete). Furthermore, he demonstrated how each new configuration –of the text, of knowledge-, potentially, allows other relations and the emergence of new possible situations. On the other hand, Ganahl showed how specific bibliographical references, or the indexing of certain names –authorities in the subject-, lead us to identify with a specific discourse, not to access a vaster wisdom, therefore proving the historical or social specificity of all forms of knowledge.

Following this line of work, and as a reflection of the authority of institutionalised knowledge, since 1995 Ganahl has been developing the work S/L (Seminare/Lectures). It is an archive of photographs taken by the artist during different university seminars in as a student or an auditor. As well as showing the speakers, the photographs sometimes also show the audience and present no formal differences from any other photographic document typical of this type of events. Both the lecturers (Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bordieu, Benjamin Buchloch, Paul Virilio, etc.) and the location of the speeches (College de France, in Paris; Columbia University, in New York; Dia Art Foundation, also in New York; Dia Art Foundation, also in New York; Frieze Art Fair, in London, etc.) are, obviously, recognisable by anyone who is in the artistic circle. What do these photographs refer to? Does this series of images mean to do anything but show us the artistic-social scene we already know? What about the issues they address?: “Muslim representations”, “European Art”, “The intersection of global circuits”, “Female genital mutilation”, “M. Rosler talks with curators Dan Cameron and Brian Wallis at NYU”…The images portray figures from the intellectual sphere –with grandiloquent, and sometimes even prophetic, gestures-, institutions that have garnered academic prestige or dynamic platforms that are currently giving way to new artistic trends, all gathered around key issues for debate in the framework of a postcolonial policy that, typically, attempts to contemplate aspects such a gender differences or the existence of ethnic minorities, showing the arrogance of the western culture. By objectively recording these images Ganahl exposes the existence of mechanisms that procure and preserve the intellectual authority of certain elites. This group of people and institutions are the key elements that play a part in the construction of a specific interpretation of the facts and whose existence, according to Ganahl himself, contributes to a whole “educational industry” which, commencing in the US, has subsequently been exported to European universities and cultural institutions. This industry uses institutionalised frameworks to supply a market that needs the consumption of cultural products-services. Although we can always ask, according to the same decolonising vision that defines these discourses, and as the artist comments ironically, who can access and take part in these seminars in the end, since most are organised by costly private universities?

Among Ganahl’s other works (as well as the vast amount of material which, as mentioned above, readers can access via the Internet), perhaps the most well-known have to do with learning languages, an activity that the artist has been carrying out for yeas. At the 1999 Venice Biennale, Gahanhl, always focusing his artistic work on its social projection, produced t-shirts bearing a slogan in fifty different languages: “Please teach me”. The fifty languages used by the artist corresponded to the countries that did not have a pavilion at the Biennale. Venice also showed all the material –loads of videotapes, books, grammars, dictionaries, slides, etc.- that the artist had used to learn some of the languages he has studied: Korean, Russian, Arabic…it is very interesting to examine Ganahl’s research on languages and their relationship with the representations that construct the understanding of a specific culture. For instance, the artist has observed how in Japanese, where there are several styles of writing, words with a foreign origin are written with a different symbol. This observation stresses the Japanese/non-Japanese division as something consubstantial to this culture and, also, reveals the clichés, prejudice and representations that have constructed the Japanese identity, which, for westerns, appears to be a gregarious and impenetrable culture.

The works commented prove the importance Rainer Ganahl gives to the construction of discourses in his oeuvre, considering the concept as a series of images, stories and assertions (oral and written texts: conversations, interviews, letters, art, advertising, etc.) that lead to the collective construction of a specific interpretation of the facts.

Consequently, Ganahl has studied the social and media impact of the conflict in Afghanistan and, more recently, in Iraq, but always feels that it is important to make us understand that he is not trying to show us a right or wrong vision of the facts. In this sense, an at all times, Ganahl refrains from putting forward any kind of opinion. It is , actually, a case of understanding how the same event can be represented using a different (or even contradicting) discourse and that, behind each discourse, there is a specific form of knowledge, a way of understanding the world and reality that is derived from specific historical, cultural and social factors.

Consequently, Iraq Dialogs emerges from a platform for dialogue that creates an exchange of ideas and opinions between Iraqi expatriates who currently live in Europe. An exhibition on show at the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (MUMOK) in Vienna in 2005 presented an aspect of this platform. For the show, the artist extracted logos, headlines and graphic material from US television information about the Iraqi conflict and asked people to react to that material. The artist used tiles in this show in the same way as he used computers in the Nineties as a communicative metaphor. The tiles, decorative elements that are very typical of Arab countries, were used as a support for logos like CNN, or FOX News, and subtitles like “AMERICA:HOMELAND SECURITY”or“OPERATION FREEDOM IRAK”.Alongside these headlines, the show also displayed the delicate calligraphic work written in Arabic with the interventions of the participants. The confrontation of these messages on this type of support was genuinely shocking. The exhibition also include a parallel work in which the artist copied by hand the first pages of newspapers that narrated the events that took place during the war, as well as some works in pen, all using time-consuming techniques that contrasted with the effectiveness and speed the media acts with today. With this confrontation of messages and techniques, Rainer Ganahl achieves what appears as the basis of his work: to re-contextualise the contents to expose the construction of discourses that are, in this case, directly conflicting. Beyond this, the artist also manages to reflect on how certain discourses serve the interest of power whose efficiency –quoting Foucault- is directly proportional to its capacity to conceal its mechanisms.

Translation: Laura F. Farhall

(LÁPIZ N° 229, January 2007)