Cláudia Cristóvão: The File Project

Cláudia Cristóvão. The File Project June 27 – July 27, 2009

Cláudia Cristóvão’s (born in Luanda, Angola in 1973, raised in Lisbon) multimedia installations examine forms of memory, identity and their ties to individually and culturally-informed spaces and places. Often using years of research,, observation and interviews as a point of departure, Cristóvão's filmic documentaries search for clues among people whose real experiences have been obscured by recollection and projection, such as those forced to flee their home countries in early childhood as a consequence of de-colonisation (Fata Morgana, 2005-06 and Le Voyage Imaginaire, 2008) or, as in The File Project (2005-2006), among individuals affected by the East German secret police. In both projects, the documentary form lends the work a certain stringency and structure while condensed (moving) images sustain a unique, atmospheric-aesthetic dynamic. The artist focuses on and superimposes the various narrative levels either by moving over the surfaces of things, moving through inner and outer spaces or mapping them.

Shown for the first time in Germany, the three-part video installation The File Project consists of two film works (Curtains, projection / Skinflower, monitor) and a series of Polaroids. Here, filmed interviews are replaced by a series of staged actions captured on photographs: extras were taken to urban places and asked to re-enact gestures used by Stasi agents as secret codes. The act of substitution, coupled with stylised posturing, allows secret communication to become a kind of typology, referring to the idea of ‘acting’ itself or the roles we commonly assume in public space: “I am very interested in issues related to the limits of the public sphere and the way in which, individually or collectively, we react to the role expectations that this sphere imposes” (Cristóvão).

The large-scale projection Curtains begins with a view through an half-parted curtain, a voyeuristic, observational motif that draws gaze into the scene. The twelve-minute colour video was shot without permission in the former Ministry for State Security in Berlin. Open to the public as a museum since 1990, the office had last been inhabited by Erich Mielke and Egon Krenz. Long, static shots of 1970s-style interiors and traces of their use by the former occupants are striking: details and surfaces such as light switches, telephones and carpet patterns are lined up, providing a glimpse into open drawers and cabinets.

None of the shots leave the interior to look to the outside. Contemporary reality and the world of mnemonic reconstruction never meet. The sound file, a collage of of bell sounds, interference, numerals and brief instructions spoken in several languages was pieced together from a a web radio station archive. Heard in combination with the image, the sound captures the atmosphere of the place as the historical seat of a repressive intelligence and secret police agency. Barely decipherable, it is impossible to tell if the the cryptic information is actually transmitting real secret codes or if they are only meaningless syllables. In Skinflower, a video loop, we see an open umbrella blown inside out, on top of a house against a grey sky. Shaped like a satellite dish or a world receiver, it could be sending and receiving signals similar to the ones heard in the sound file. Cristóvão refers to the single, moving image as a “glimpse” - one that mediates between the Polaroids stills and the projection.

Cristóvão's work moves a camera through archives of collective and individual memories. The artist gives the stories and splinters of recollection entrusted to her access to cultural memory, a memory that plays a similar role to the historical constellations themselves.

With kind support of Kulturamt (Arts Department) Stadt Köln, Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn, Mondriaan Stichting

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Lecture, Thursday July 9, 2009, 7 p.m. Kerstin Schankweiler Phantom Africa. Postcolonial aspects in contemporary African art If the documenta in Kassel could be considered as an indicator of actual tendencies in the European art system, then the last two exhibitions of the years 2002 and 2007 impressively have proved its change. Meanwhile works by contemporary artists of the south and the ease will be included without showing European and American art positions only, as it was usual extensively till the 1990s. The documenta and the Venice Biennial – to mention another ‘grande dame’ of the exhibition system – have to compete worldwide against similar formats. Also southern metropolitans like Istanbul, Havanna and Dakar Biennials sprung up like mushrooms in the 1990s. In the meantime a lot of them are established and are part of the desireable decentralization of the international art system. These changes support also a critically questioned dichotomous imagination of the ‘west’ as ‘centre’ in the art system and the rest of the world as ‘periphery’. At the same time these changes offer the possibility to distribute more equally the power of decision in the art system and to access it for actors who were marginalized till now. But the processes of globalization could not be evaluated far too positively. Primarily, they are characterized by ambivalence and change between a fatal or a promising potential: Although the definition of ‘global art’ describes an international, supposed all including equally phenomenon of economic and communicative networking in the art system, but is mainly based on a western view and of European and north-American power of definition and financial capacity. On this background the lecture turns its attention to art from Africa and its presence in the exhibition system. In doing so, the Biennial of Dakar (Senegal) will be focused as well as exemplary artistic positions. These will be questioned regarding their critical contributions to the actual discussion about a coming to terms with the colonial past and the reception of non-European art in western Metropolises. For the last mentioned strategies of assignation and appropriation play a disputable role in the art system, which leads to a problematic labeling (‘African Art’). Meanwhile, it has become clear that there is no definite answer to the question “Who is an African artist?” and with its addressing there will be opened up a highly topical discursive field of irritating complexity. As each try to define ‘African art’ does not make sense. It is a phantom or a “Fata Morgana”, as Cláudia Cristóvão – who actually has her solo exhibition at Projects in Art & Theory – named Africa with a title of her video installation. She exhibited the work of the same title 2006 at the Dakar Biennial. The artist confronts screens with personal stories by migrants in a factual documentary style with poetic and nearly surreal landscape of remembrance to visualize the phantasmal character of the African continent.

Kerstin Schankweiler is art historian, lives in Cologne and works as scientific assistant at the Art History Department of University of Cologne since May 2008; 2008 Dissertation on “Le theatre du monde…! – site-specificity and cultural transfer in the installations by George Adéagbo”, University of Trier on occasion of a dissertation fellowship at the postgraduate program by the German research communit (DFG) “Identity and Difference”, since 2004 founding member of the “Centre for Postcolonial and Gender Studies (CePoG), University of Trier; Research topics: art of the 20th and 21st century, contemporary Art from Africa, art history and Postcolonialism, Artist’s myth, Gender and Material Culture Studies. Recent Publications: “A universal museum for Berlin? On ‘The Tropics – Views fro the Middle of the Globe”, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (with Sarah Maupeu), in: Texte zur Kunst, 19, vol. 73, 2009; “African signpost painting and the medial translation in the cultural transfer”, in: off topic, Magazine of the Media Art School Cologne, vol. 0, 2008; Co-editor of the Anthology “ Ethnicity and Gender. (Pot-)colonial negotiations in history, art and media, Cologne 2005.

With kind support of Kulturamt (Arts Department) Stadt Köln, Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn, Gerda Henkel Stiftung

Claudia Cristovao
The File Project