In reply to the question of why he had gone to Tahiti, Paul Gauguin answered, »I was seduced by this virginal earth and by its primitive and simple race. In order to create something new, one has to return to the source, to mankind in its childhood state.« Christian Kravagna quoted this revealing statement in a lecture held in March 2002 at the Vienna Museum of Modern Art entitled »The Artist as Traveler,« in which he analyzed the influence of the history of ideas on artists' travels in the 19th and 20th centuries. Gauguin's statement is symptomatic of the point of view of Europeans, who looked to exotic far-off lands seeking a counterimage to a civilization-weary present. Looking at Gauguin's images of native women without bearing this subtext in mind would inevitably lead to a trivialized interpretation. The exhibition curated by Kravagna, »Routes - Imaging Travel and Migration,« attempts to trace how contemporary artists have subjected such historical image genealogies and narratives to critical scrutiny in their own works. What all the exhibited works have in common (by the artists Zeigam Azizov, Martin Beck, Emily Jacir, Gülsün Karamustafa, Dorit Margreiter, Lisl Ponger, Tim Sharp and Vivian Sundaram) is that they forego any ostensible documentary gesture, but instead develop divergent narrative forms arising out of reflections on the image media used. They also share a belief in the dissident persuasive power of images - something not called into question.

Lisl Ponger, for example, shows a series of advertising photos from old Hollywood adventure films. The film industry did not hesitate to delve into its stock of stereotypes when it came to creating movie Indians or Oriental beauties. In the middle photo one sees the artist herself swathed in the robes of an Afghan warrior, armed with a Kalashnikov and a camera. In crafting the picture frames the artist used materials reminiscent of the era of colonial trade: coffee beans and tropical woods.

Martin Beck screens a black image on a video monitor. The info text explains that Michelangelo Antonioni's film »Professione Reporter« is actually being shown here - but without the picture. If one waits long enough, a single scene from the movie appears - one typical for ethnographic documentary: a reporter played by Jack Nicholson pesters a local resident with intrusive questions. The native stands up, annoyed, turns the camera on the reporter and remarks that the questions say more about the questioner than any answer he might give would say about him. With the film stills he has chosen to display - a few desert scenes - Beck adheres to the meanings offered by the film, distilling from it those moments that seem the most interesting to him. Similarly, Tim Sharp makes reference to the origin of the ethnographic image in the film: he shows a very conventional film about the inhabitants of the Sahara that was purchased at the flea market. The fictional in the one example becomes blurred together with the documentary aspects of the other.

Vivan Sundaran, who presents his family photo album processed with computerized image editing, leaves room for interpretational ambiguity. An old man, clothed only in a loincloth -- the artist's grandfather -- stands, thanks to computer manipulation, in a fancy salon furnished in turn-of-the-century style. A young woman in western garb sits next to him, laughing. These kinds of combinations are then repeated, with changing backgrounds and furnishings, poses and gestures, conveying the spectrum of roles taken on by those shown, which are further intensified by the artist's manipulations. Something akin to image appropriation can be seen most readily in this example.

Noticeable in the exhibition, which is about travel, either voluntary or forced, is that none of the artists exhibiting actually traveled anywhere. Emily Jacir took up this contradiction as the theme of her work by driving for one hour through the Texas desert and then displaying her trip in a video linked with the hit list from a music show. The list was compiled by Palestinians who cannot move about freely due to Israeli security patrols. »Which song would you play if you could move around as you like for one hour?« asked Jacir. The songs selected are then played as background music for the drive through Texas.

Zeigam Azizov, Gülsün Karamustafa and Dorit Margreiter chose as their subject various travel locales, both real and symbolic. In Azizov's video, sites that articulate the theme of migration appear: a cyber café, for example, or a library. Karamustafa stages scenes with people in a hotel room. Margreiter shows a video of her Asian mother reading a pseudo-reference book about Oriental women. A woman as subject articulates the reifying jargon of the book.

The exhibit succeeds in presenting alternative views diverging from the clichéd travel narrative mentioned at the beginning, or at times in highlighting the patterns on which such clichés are based. One might describe the show with the motto »A Different Way to Travel«. Nevertheless, in most cases the results still float on the surface of the critical point of departure. Thus, on the whole, the illustrative spirit of the exhibition itself ends up seeming somewhat mired in cliché.

 

Translated by Jennifer Taylor-Gaida

 

---