»I’ll stop believing in you if you stop believing in me« is the title of a project that was conceived in 2007 by two young South African artists, Ruth Sacks and Robert Sloon. It can be seen as a continuation of artistic attempts to create a counter-publicity. This project takes the form of an authentic catalogue of an exhibition that never really took place. »I’ll stop believing« is based on the concept of confronting the media power of the art world and thus takes up the thread of earlier works by these two artists. Ruth Sacks works on the border of institutional critique and detective novels, taking a malicious pleasure in manipulating social and cultural fictions and illusions. Robert Sloon mainly occupies himself with his blog »ArtHeat« (artheat.blogspot.com), a sort of tabloid for the South African art scene that often publishes hot rumours and other calumnies. His site is nonetheless taken seriously by local art critics such as Michael Smith from »Artthrob«, who has described it as »having a sense of responsibility to the underground«.

The work of Sacks and Sloon draws on a curatorial strategy that has already proved its worth in conceptual art and has been put in theoretical form by Seth Siegelaub. According to Siegelaub, publications are the best way to find new types of exhibitions. For example, Robert Smithson and Dan Graham have »exhibited« in the pages of »Artforum«, and catalogues have been designed as exhibitions. One of the best-known of these publications is »July, August, September 1969«, whose title motif of a world map is shared by »I’ll stop believing in you«. »July, August, September 1969« presented eleven artists Künstler (Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, Douglas Huebler, Lawrence Weiner etc.), distributed in different places around the world. The catalogue became a prerequisite for the exhibition. This method, now widely used by the mainstream, was subsequently varied in many ways. For example, in 1999, Maurizio Cattelan played with the codes of international exhibitions by using them to put on a real false biennial to which he invited ten artist friends for a week-long holiday on the Caribbean island St. Kitts. The catalogue of this 6th Caribbean Biennial was the only thing that vouched for its having taken place. The series »Cream«, on the other hand, publishes playlists authorised by the art world while pretending to be a catalogue-exhibition.

In this sense, »I’ll stop believing in you« - the documentation of a fictive exhibition – could be read as a parody of the communication obsession in the art world. But seeing it in this way would deprive it of the performative aspect that underlies it: the catalogue creates the exhibition. Unlike the famous projects mentioned, Sacks and Sloon’s concept has not yet found a publisher, so it can not really be considered to be finished. So far, only two prototypes exist in the possession of the two curators. It is an obvious conclusion that, nowadays, a book that has not yet been printed and published does not have the same status as one that already exists in published form. I too am working here in the sense of the curators – not the way they themselves would write, but within the framework of the concept –, and thus risk producing a fiction myself.

It is doubtless no coincidence that a project like this one is being carried out in a country like South Africa. The structural position of artists in the international art industry has left its traces not only in the lives of these artists, but can sometimes shape their entire work. For South Africa is the only African country with an art scene, i.e. it has institutions, journals, galleries and collectors. Artists often have several positions in this art scene; they are critics, editors in chief of journals or exhibition curators all at the same time. The scene is concentrated in Cape Town and Johannesburg and is driven by the rivalry of these two cities for the title of art capital. Since the Johannesburg Biennial closed down after its second edition in 1997, it has become clear that, despite all attempts at relativisation, there is no international connection anymore. It is true that the country is still marked with a cross on the map of the international art circuit, but because of the lack of exhibition venues, state backing and an interested audience that actively supports art, no efficient alternative constructions of the art scene have been evolved. Until further notice, the country remains on the margins of the international scene.

To a certain degree, it is possible to interpret this lack of inner coherence in the art scene as a consequence of the disparate strategies and frequent rivalry between the artists, who compete for attention and recognition abroad. It is still difficult for them to exhibit on a regular basis. The problems with infrastructure and financing can become real obstacles. Even established artists often struggle with similar difficulties. It is thus understandable that, in the biotope of this South African art world, it is necessary to play the game with accompanying publications. Becoming acquainted with art works here means seeing them as that which Seth Seigelaub described as secondary information: as documentation (in brochures, journals, catalogues, on the Internet). One of the most striking aspects of this phenomenon is the number of publications in which art is presented in comparison with the rest of Africa. »It is this that we address in I’ll stop believing in you if you stop believing in me. We decided to cut corners and remove the exhibition altogether«, Ruth Sacks says.¹ In South Africa, the strategy of concept artists has an additional, very pragmatic aspect.

[b]Prognoses, expectations, hearsay[/b]
The »catalogue as exhibition« shows the need in South Africa to try out alternative models of exhibition and distribution. In an era in which communication, de-materialisation and electronic distribution have changed curatorial methods, this format offers the chance to provide private and personal contact with art works. For Sacks, »one of the fundamental differences between the exhibition-in-a-book and a more conventional exhibition structure is that the former necessitates a personal experience from the viewer«. »I’ll stop believing« brings together projects by some 15 artists of various nationalities. It can thus be called an international exhibition.² The group was put together solely by means of online discussions. This means that many participants have not been in physical contact with the two curators or even corresponded with them by letter. The concept required the artists to play along with the pretence of the fictive exhibition and to get involved in projects that they would never be able to carry out in real time and real space. The aim was for no one to know which project is real and which imagined. For example, the photographer Kiluanji Kia Henda from Angola shows photos of buildings and ruins in Luanda, but from an Afro-futuristic point of view. This means they look like futuristic outer-space constructions, but can also be interpreted as documentary photographs.

It would naturally have been possible to put on the exhibition on the Internet as well, but a catalogue is, in the end, a more legitimate proof. Apart from its function as a medium of communication, it documents an event that has already happened; it is thus a documentation, archive and proof of the exhibition at one and the same time. If it is not possible to gather information at first hand, the catalogue remains the best medium of documentation in the art world: it has a global scope and exhibitions can be distributed throughout the world. But here, to clumsily paraphrase a well-known Surrealist saying, we are looking at a catalogue without an art work that has not been exhibited.

The performative aspect of the project implicitly refers to an old, familiar sociological mechanism that the American sociologist Robert K. Merton has called »self-fulfilling prophecy«. Merton based this idea on the following theory of W. I. Thomas: »If people assume certain situations to be real, this belief will have real consequences«. The first part of this statement reminds us that people do not react solely to the objective characteristics of a situation, but also – and sometimes even more – to the meaning that they attribute to a situation. This meaning, once established, determines the behaviour that comes afterwards, which in its turn will have real consequences. Let us expand on this theory. The collective views of a situation (prognoses, expectations, hearsay) are themselves part of the situation and therefore influence its further development. The »self-fulfilling prophecy« begins with a wrong view of the situation, causing new behaviours that makes the originally false view true in retrospect. In the case of »I’ll stop beleiving«, the »self-fulfilling prophecy« would be »Fake it until you make it«. It could thus – tacitly – enter into a remote dialogue with the artist Chintain Upadhay from Mumbai, who suggested a contribution under the slogan: »I would like to be an internationa artist« - as if mere willpower could bring this about.

»I’ll stop believing« has yet another aspect that takes the conceptualistic mechanism of this work beyond the student pranks à la Cattelan. For Ruth Sacks claims that the idea for the project came to her while working on a folder of her works for applying to European galleries: »I realized I could invent projects and few could tell the difference if I provided believable documentation. That is why (Robert Sloon and I) asked all the artists to work along the theme of lying and fakery. An exhibition in a book is not a new idea, but our theme is special.«

This observation again suggests the feeling of being on the periphery – a feeling that characterises not only the entire South African art scene with regard to the international scene, but all artists at the start of their careers. Sacks thus reveals to us the ideal reader of the catalogue. The feeling of being on the margins, outside the main arena, is felt as a restriction, but Sacks also discovers in it a latitude for movement that leads to a certain lack of respect for the international art world. This genuine lack of respect in the project could be seen, however anecdotal it may be, as a far echo of earlier protest movements that created a spectacular counter-public sphere in opposition to the geo-political globalisation of the art field. One needs only to think of the movement that caused the 1997 Johannesburg Biennial, directed by Okwui Enwezor, to fail, partly because the South African artists felt excluded. Or of the Brazilian artists who, under the name »artesvisuais_políticas«, mobilised against the foundation of a branch of the Guggenheim Museum in Rio. Because this controversial project was partly promoted using public money, it became a real threat to local cultural initiatives. If one calls to mind the spirit of the ideal reader of Ruth Sacks, it is possible to recognise the latent objective of the project even in the title of »I’ll stop believing in you«. For the title comes from a song by The Unicorns called »I was born (a unicorn«, whose last verse is no less significant:

We’re the Unicorns.
We’re more than horses.
We’re the Unicorns
And we’re people too!

The whole bluff is intensified still further by the fact that most of the participating artists go under a false name. Because if this catalogue does not intend to delude anyone as to its fictitious nature, several participants have also taken on a pseudonym, including Robert Sloon. All in all it is difficult to determine the number and names of the participating artists, especially as Ruth Sacks likes to cover up her tracks and intimates that, in reality, she could have made all the projects in the catalogue herself. Besides gradually opening up abysses for the readers of the publication – fictive exhibition, fictive works, uncertain artists – the pseudonyms create an anonymity that suggests the idea of an invisible elite that, behind the scenes, is honing the accompanying conditions of its public appearance: »That is, if artists are a sort of brand and the curator a glamorous celebrity, then theses labels should guarantee the commercial success of the show«.

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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