»I won’t go to the Palais de Tokyo any more«: so reads the headline of an »activist« protest poster that an artist, working autonomously and under a pseudonym, has stuck up on strategically important walls in Paris. One such wall is situated directly next to »Le Plateau«, the FRAC of the Ile-de-France, which was opened last year only a few weeks after the Palais de Tokyo and since then has entered into competition with it as the other new Paris location for contemporary art. In fact, the contrast, which has often been described, could not be greater: the Palais de Tokyo – the young, wild, cool, spacious and super-creative pool in the upper-class, diplomatic 16th arrondissement; Le Plateau – the functional, sober, small white cube, the product of a local struggle that was almost lost, in the multi-ethnic, lively, bourgeois 19th arrondissement.

As far as the Palais de Tokyo is concerned, its capital is based on apparent local differences and obvious international similarities: it shows exhibitions that could barely be seen at any other location in Paris, but could be just as easily displayed in the Berlin Kunst-Werke, the London ICA, or the New York P.S. 1. This specificity functions via an image strategy that is predicated on identity and frequently criticised. It takes it for granted that open questions about the art displayed can be settled in actual fact by continually working contemporary slogans. This dialectically pulls the plug on the debate about the socio-political effects of art: a venue like the Palais de Tokyo sees itself as the application of art to society.

The fact that this strategy often and quickly becomes problematic could be seen in one exhibition where the slogans had to stand comparison with the reality of their political consequences. The exhibition »Hardcore – vers un nouvel activisme«, curated by the co-director, Jérôme Sans, together with Claire Staebler and Aurélie Voltz, featured works by seventeen international artists and artists’ groups that aim to »take up an alternative, critical angle on the social, economic and political context, in the same way as a pirate radio station«. They claimed that their works displayed a new sort of activism »that no longer [functioned] the same way as the protest strategies of the sixties and seventies«.

The poster for the exhibition and the cover of the catalogue showed a collage of motifs taken from works of the participating artists in a »punky« black-and-white style, thus intimating that the concept of activism in play here was intended to evoke effects rather than a search for causes. And, indeed, you don’t always have to carry »Empire« around in your pocket to manage projects like these. But with »Hardcore«, an exhibition where it was unclear whether the title was to suggest punkitude, porn or provocation, the lack of nearly any kind of theoretical background weighed heavy in the balance. True, it was mentioned in the accompanying web forum that, in the present domestic political situation, curating an exhibition like this one in a state-backed institution did entail a certain degree of risk. However, there is room for doubt whether »Hardcore« could have been really understood as a genuine statement apart from its documentary character. Dangerous it was not.

Alain Declercq’s work – a cruise missile painted with the insignia of »American Airlines« – provided a good example of this attitude. In the accompanying video, one sees a TV documentation on September 11 shown on the backseat monitor of a car, alternating with pan shots of Paris at night. When the car arrives at the back entrance of the Palais de Tokyo, the camera enters the workshops and shows a laboratory-like situation in which the missile is being built by workers in protective clothing. The artist as an agent of subversion? The Palais de Tokyo, paid for by the French state, as a terrorist cell? Here, one could see a motif that permeated the exhibition, one that has to be loosely described as a harmless »ha-ha« effect.

In contrast, among the works that could be classed as »realpolitical«, Jota Castro’s Container – a similar set-up, in which he brought together documentary material (newspaper clippings, web prints, a TV5 documentary) on France’s Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy – was, for example, too diffuse to provide any convincing argument. Was this a general attack on Sarkozy? Was it about his Sangatte policy? Was it about his friendship with politicians of the Front National? Was it about the image he presents of himself in the media? A neon slogan – SANGATTE – and another in the colours of the tricolour – Aux Armes Citoyens – gave the space a suggestive rather than a concrete effect.

Considering the limited number of works on display, it is astonishing that Castro, as well as Minerva Cuevas, Kendell Geers, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Gianni Motti and Santiago Sierra, all had three, or sometimes four of their works shown. Did this mean that there is a lack of artists or works that can illustrate the theme of activism, or was this hierarchisation used to present »competence« in a very obvious way? Particularly in the case of Sierra’s works, this accumulation produced an effect that was probably not intended: here, Sierra produces his works with the help of migrants, in the next series with prostitutes, then blind people. The seriality highlighted here could almost be read as an unintentional exposure of an artistic approach that can be extended at will, and which is already being imitated: for example, Kendell Geers placed a few coins in a pissoir and, in a video that could be viewed elsewhere in the exhibition, explained the connection between humiliation and financial gain purportedly shown in the work Anticipating discourses, he also added the word »Women« to the pictogram meaning »Men« on the toilet doors, and vice versa. He presented this with such simplicity that the whole seemed almost contemplative.

Gianni Motti’s video of an event in the Villa Medici in Rome, at which he reunited the Italian punk band »Bloody Riot« for a concert – with provocative intent? -, the three burnt-out car wrecks lying about helplessly in the room (a work by Sisley Xhafa), and the holes in the wall, now functioning as the exit from the exhibition, put there by Henrik Plenge Jakobsen (which, in view of the architecture of the Palais de Tokyo, seemed decorative) all made a similarly »constructed« impression. In contrast, Clarisse Hahn’s documentary film »Karima« may have caused some consternation because of its explicit fisting scenes; it shows the daily work and leisure activities of a domina (in a separated-off part of the exhibition marked by a warning sign).

Certain lapses that affected the impression made by »Hardcore« are worth a mention because of their frequency: the sound to Grimonprez’s »Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y«, shown here one more time, drowned in the loud buzz of noise coming from the café, Motti’s punk work dominated the dozen works surrounding it, the individual monitors were not geared to one another in Suh Lea Cheang’s film »I.K.U.«, and in Motti’s »Sparkassen« (»Banks«) work – a video about the story of a bank- robbery that was declared authentic by the German TV station RTL but doctored by Motti – there are no subtitles, making the work comprehensible only to German- speaking visitors. »Hardcore« contained only a few works that really tied in with true political activism as practised outside of the artistic context. These included the »Refinery« producing vegetable oil by AAA Corp., Nicolas Milhés work – a faked text announcing the imminent construction of accommodation for migrants on properties in the 16th arrondissement -, which was almost shamefacedly hidden in the exhibition, and the works by Minerva Cuervas. In one video by her, a dangerous clown stands at the edge of the road protesting against McDonald’s: it is an actor in the mask of an exaggerated Ronald McDonald; he is wearing bio-hazard signs on his costume instead of the company logo, his mouth is made-up in a cynical grimace. When he enters a full Paris restaurant belonging to the company and continues to discuss working conditions there, a situation arises that is interpreted by the confused customers and employees as a real piece of political activism that goes beyond art. It is therefore almost absurd – also in view of the week-long occupation of a local McDonald’s restaurant by the Paris activists from »Stop Precarité« – when one reads on a sign in the exhibition describing Cuevas’ works that interventionist articulations like the one carried out by the artist »are only imaginable in the artistic field, the only place where there is freedom«.

At this point in the text, a visitor has marked the »only« and added a big, red question mark. This question mark contradicts everything, where »Hardcore« only places a helpless – but all the louder for it - exclamation mark, a call for responsibilities. And it enquires once more after the argument used by Brian Holmes in springerin 1/03: namely, that the disappearance of art in activism is preferable to the emergence of activisms in art.

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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