Carpe NOCTEM
Carpe NOCTEM Dmitri Obergfell
Table of Contents 1 10
Go Home Bacchuss You’re Drunk Statement Photographic essay: Carpe Noctem
37 Acknowledgments
Bacchus (1497), Michelangelo
Go Home , You’re Drunk Internet Meme
Go Home Bacchus, You’re Drunk
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Public Monuments
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Go Home Bacchus, You’re Drunk is a public sculpture that stands as a testament to the marriage of monuments and vandalism. The sculpture is a 12-foot tall fiberglass statue of Bacchus, the Greco-Roman god of wine, passion, and fertility. The figure is planted upside-down into the ground, seemingly upturned but in a permanent way – cemented into the earth up to the bridge of the nose. The fiberglass is finished to resemble marble. It is grey in tone except for one splash of purple paint, dripping vertically as if vandalized first while right side up. A hidden base attached to the top of the head is buried to the bridge of the nose, allowing for its seemingly precarious counterweighted installation. In day-to-day life we grow accustom to our environment. We travel to and from destinations, passing our cities and towns accepting them as the background of our lives. In almost every developed landscape monuments and vandalism reside. Their presence is so enduringly common that they usually go by
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unobserved, unless noted by a local news station before the dedication of monument or shortly after an incident of vandalism. However disparate these acts may seem, when observed in relation these two forms of communication can be seen as a weathervane for socio-political climate of any given society. In fact, monuments and vandalism stand inextricably connected to each other as a symbol of their relationship to their surroundings. Public monuments represent the aesthetic consensus of a governing political ideology, a visual testament to the bureaucratic process they embody and a physical manifestation of a political ideology. Spray painted political rhetoric or splashes of paint can stand as a visual argument against a political force. In recent times, vandalism and graffiti has been used to express dissent in regions where governments have oppressed differing ideological views, e.g. Syria, Egypt, Zimbabwe and so on.1 These acts of vandalism often happen in the public domain, and can be commonly found on public monuments. The title of the sculpture, Go Home Bacchus, You’re Drunk, references an Internet meme used to describe images depicting dumb, inebriated, or absurd behavior. The title uses associations of the meme and compares them both to the act of erecting monuments and of vandalism. Both the act of erecting monuments and vandalism are often oversimplified, sometimes belligerent, forms of communication. The very nature of these forms of communication lack the context, intention, or belief they are meant to represent. Go Home Bacchus, You’re Drunk is a critique of these types of public dialogue by using the mediums themselves but paired in a new way 1 Julia Greenburg, “Political Graffiti Illustrates Civil Unrest Around the World from Cairo to Yemen,” International Business Times, 6 March 2012, http://www. ibtimes.com/political-graffiti-illustrates-civil-unrest-around-world-cairo-yemenphotos-554551 (accessed 10 Dec. 2013)
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Go Home Bacchus, You’re Drunk project sketch
that illustrates the tension between them. Monuments represent a politically charged interpretation of a person, place, or event. Ralph Rugoff ’s curatorial work on public monuments positions them as oversimplified representations. Expressing his distrust of the medium he said, “monuments… traditionally speak with absolute authority”2. Furthermore saying that they, “strike a blow against our dearest democratic impulses, including our willingness to change our opinion to revise and remodel our views of the past.”3 Rugoff ’s point is well taken considering the mediums most common materials are bronze, stone, or other metals. One thinks of the cliché, set in stone, and it is hard to argue the unchangeable representation of a historic figure or event. This unchangeable, and arguably permanent, attribute is ultimately the feature that leads to its inability to relate to contemporary life and its relation to the plurality around us. For 20th century dictators like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, etc, this quality made them the perfect irrefutable medium for propaganda and symbols of their regimes’ vitality. Stalin used monuments as way to claim his regime’s modernity4 and visions of a utopic future5. Stalin famously also used monuments as a tool to establish a cult of personality, offsetting his awkwardness and lack of charisma.6 Despite the efforts of Stalin and his dictorial peers, history revealed often-tragic realities contrary to the narratives presented in their monuments. 2 Ralph Rugoff, Monuments for the USA (San Francisco: California College of the Arts, 2005), 4. 3 Ralph Rugoff, Monuments for the USA (San Francisco: California College of the Arts, 2005), 4. 4 Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, Utopia and Terror in the 20th Century (Chantilly: The Teaching Company, 2003 ),63. 5 Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, Utopia and Terror in the 20th Century (Chantilly: The Teaching Company, 2003 ), 61. 6 Sergiusz Michalski, Public Monuments:Art in Political Bondage 1870-1997 (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 1998), 96.
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Much like monuments are the visual representation of a government’s ideology, the subsequent destruction of monuments becomes a defining moment for change or unrest. As an example, one can look at the 2003 destruction of the Saddam Hussein statue by the United States Marines during the invasion of Iraq – now an emblem of Hussein’s demise. These events were recently echoed in events involving the toppling of a long controversial Lenin statue in Ukraine. Recently in the Atlantic Uri Friedman commented on the ability of monuments to create historical moments of change saying, “there are many ways to create iconic moments during protest movements, but perhaps none is as reliable—as fraught with symbolism—as toppling a statue.”7 The toppling of the statue was a metaphor for the protestor’s frustration with Russian influence in Ukrainian politics. The statue of Lenin came to represent the history of Russian influence since the Bolshevik/Soviet era. Protestors destroyed the statue after the Ukrainian government allegedly folded under Russian pressure and walked back on its financial negotiations with the European Union. The ruin of the Lenin statue by protestors signifies a paradigm shift. The politically charged nature of monuments and their high visibility in the public domain makes them ideal receptacles of opposition or change. The author Robert Musil goes as far to say that monuments have a “vandalism-inciting quality”.8 Vandalism and monuments have long been married. The term “vandalism” comes from an ancient Germanic tribe, The Vandals, most widely known as the barbarians that destroyed Roman culture after sacking Rome in 455 AD. In the sacking of 7 Uri Friedman, “The Remarkable History Behind Ukraine’s Toppled Lenin Statue,” The Atlantic, 08 Dec. 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/ archive/2013/12/the-remarkable-history-behind-ukraines-toppled-leninstatue/282141/ (accessed 09 Dec. 2013) 8 Robert Musil, “On Monuments,” Harper’s, June 1988, 35.
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April 9, 2003 American soilders tie ropes around the neck of the Saddam Hussein statue in order to topple it. Š AFP
August 24, 410 Sack of Rome by the Visigoths on by Joseph-NoĂŤl Sylvestre
Rome, The Vandals wrecked monuments, art, and cultural artifacts. The Vandals sacked Rome in retribution of a betrayed pact of alliance between the Roman Emperor Valentinian III and king of the Vandals, Genseric. The pact would have joined the two tribes into an accord through an engagement between the rulers’ heirs. When the successor of Valentinian III, Emperor Maximus nullified this pact by defying the agreed upon arranged marriages the Vandals saw the act as a dissolvent of the alliance and laid siege to Rome. Despite this complicated archetype, the term vandalism has become symbolic of an uncouth or uncivilized barbarian force victimizing the nobler dignified force. Since the 5th century, the term vandalism has carried an equally complicated resonance. Vandalism can be a signifier of larger problems and can point to deficiencies experienced, change in belief structures, society, or technologies. Vandalism is not always an act of vagrancy or mischievous undirected or pointless activities. In his essay Politics of Vandalism, Stanley Cohen speaks to the nuances of vandalism and its relationship to our assumptions of those that commit the act. Cohen starts by clarifying that deviant behavior is not a static category, and that others must determine deviant behavior9. Cohen continues on to issue a warning; “This means that the sociologist should be on guard when society (or powerful groups in society) designates certain behavior problematic or deviant.”10 Cohen makes the point that the term vandalism inherently draws reference to its etymological origins of barbarous behavior and asserts that the negative connotations that hold commonplace today. Cohen recognizes the power of semantics and how labeling a deviant as 9 Stanley Cohen, “Politics of Vandalism,” The National, 11 Nov. 1968, http://www. hippy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=346 (accessed 14 Dec. 2013) 10 Stanley Cohen, “Politics of Vandalism,” The National, 11 Nov. 1968, http://www. hippy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=346 (accessed 14 Dec. 2013)
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a malicious entity can create an outside force to distrust and be regarded as dangerous. Constructing narratives that associate a vandal to an ignorant and hateful action allows for “action against the deviant.” In this context, Cohen continues on to define the subjective nature of vandalism and draw attention to the larger issue of why someone commits this act. Cohen ends his essay with this paradox: The usual terms used to describe various forms of vandalism obscure and discredit what may be the real explanations: if a boy breaks into his school and smashes up the classrooms because he has a grievance against the teachers, it is no help to call his behavior “wanton” and “pointless.” The only end such labels serve is the teacher’s need to hold himself blameless. Most research into school vandalism indicates, in fact, that there is something wrong with the school that is damaged. The highest rates of school vandalism tend to occur in schools with obsolete facilities and equipment, low staff morale and high dissatisfaction and boredom among the pupils.11
Go Home Bacchus, You’re Drunk represents the historic complexities of these two forms of public communication and show how two opposing forces have come together to establish a its own type of public discourse and aesthetic. Together they represent both sides of the coin, public monuments as the aesthetic representation of bureaucracy and vandalism as the critique of those ideas represented. By incorporating the aesthetic 11 Stanley Cohen, “Politics of Vandalism,” The National, 11 Nov. 1968, http://www. hippy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=346 (accessed 14 Dec. 2013)
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of monuments, with Greco-Roman vernacular, and vandalism, with its chaotic application, a balance is struck to present the importance of understanding both mediums. While all monuments and vandalism may not be so paradoxical, their relationship can be crucial to understanding signs of unrest or change. Seen together, the complexity of both aesthetics does not create absolutes but emphasizes the plurality of our society. The unrefined aesthetic of a vandalized monument may not be a sophisticated way of expressing dissent but it is an honest portrayal of society. Vandalized monuments are a reoccurring phenomenon and will continue to be symbols of public discourse, change, agreement, voice, and democracy. Monuments can have a dominating presence and vandalism can make their position unstable and more dynamic. As part of the background of our lives, we should be putting monuments in the public that address this paradox and reminding us to asking ourselves question like; does this monument represent the whole story? What belief system is this emphasizing? And which side, if any, do I agree with? Go Home Bacchus, You’re Drunk seeks to engage these questions in order to create public dialogue that understands the totality of our history in order to make a future that can reconcile with the past.
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CARPE NOCTEM Public Monuments
Acknowledgements All photographs in the photographic essay were soucred from Google Image Search. Photographers in order of appearence: Julian S. Erin Dreki Maria Insider David Carson Unknown David Carson Gary Ian Young Dave Ewing Unknown Fulvio Catvio Julia Terruso Brantford Police Jeruen Deny Unknown Guido Z. Chris Gordon Unknown Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Cover Image: Destruction of the Vend么me Colonne during the Paris Commune, May 1871. Published 2013
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