Previous spread: Keith Chegwin and Pollyanna Pickering with Princess, Saturday Superstore, 1984 Opposite: Marina Abramovic turns the tables on Hans Ulrich Obrist, Map Marathon at the Royal Geographic Society, 2010 Next spread: Ian Svenonius talks to Steve Albini, Soft Focus, 2009
The scene found its double just last year in the parallel universe of super-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Map Marathon. This was the fifth in the annual series of Serpentine Gallery Marathons that purport to be “a unique and innovative series of events that challenge notions of art, culture, science, technology, and methods of public discourse and debate”a. As the title suggests, they take the form of a kind of relentless display of cultural prowess, thematically tied together - this time by the idea of the map. Both subject and scale (in terms of breadth, mileage and ambition) are not un-typical for jet-setting Obrist, occupier of 2009’s top spot in The Art Review Power 100 and compulsive interviewerb. Testimony to his pulling power is the long and sparkling list of participants, each of whom took a turn in presenting an idea, research or performance that alluded to “the influence and possibilities of mapping in our world today”c. Fittingly, relationships between presentations were tenuous, satisfying a contemporary spirit for the broad and thematic, and no doubt it is more the frictions and constellations formed by them that Obrist is interested in. But like a vodka bar that promises a kaliedescopic taste sensation but ends up somewhere between bananas and a Twix, the diversity and volume of the event precluded much possibility of considering the propositions of each. Those who fared best did so by virtue of their relatively self-contained, trad-performance format, such as Suzanne Lacy’s re-staged Prostitution Notes, Genesis P-Orridge’s trippy cyber-mutant polemic and Gilbert and George’s po-faced rude street names. Otherwise, as the 30-minute slots clocked up, individual differences paled and the mechanics of the event took centre stage - prompting the sense that I had seen this somewhere before. Look to the left; the door. Look ahead; more maps. But look to the right for a slice of something far more sexy; Live Academia, in all its disheveled glory. Here, in the front row of seatsd a secondary performance unfolded whereby the actions of the imminent speakers framed those in the spotlight. From the fluster of last minute alterations to the scramble to pour water for one another, the front row displayed a latent glamour of
academia that exceeded the bias-cut dresses and sensible shoes, with lipstick applied using a mirror borrowed from the audience. Here, shuffling papers, half-eaten bruschetta and the glugging of water testified to having just got off planes from Istanbul, with October and Vogue poking out of briefcases and apologies for not having heard previous speakers as they have just arrived, but grasping the moment anyway and slotting into synch with projected nods and lots of charcoal grey. Multi-tasking, Obrist’s selfdeprecating jokes about lack of preparedness and the gentle prising open of a coffee lid whilst taking on board a weighty proposition. History in the making; the advancement of knowledge, created Here and Now. And all the while Obrist was everywhere, riding the wave, driven by the risk and swagger of just making it happen, at ground level, with all of us in it together. What had seduced me as child re-appeared, this time to no less entertaining, but rather more disturbing effect. In an essay titled Looking Away, writer and academic Irit Rogoff describes a way in which we project our subjectivity on art “allowing us to exit the application demanded from us and to unframe the exhibition from the isolating claims made for it from its mythic structures”e. By way of example she describes a Jackson Pollock exhibition in which she and a friend are driven to distraction by another visitor who resembles a cast member from ER, prompting an experience of the Pollock show imbued with ER analysis and a route determined by their (presumably) unsuspecting subject. Here the directed experience of the exhibition is undermined by abandon to pop cultural fancy and highly individualized experience. High art is re-framed by low culture, albeit in knowing defiance of contextual expectations. I thought about this at the Map Marathon, and wondered if I too was staging my own disruption [Rogoff’s term]. Yet at the Map Marathon, the mythic structure of the academic symposia (dusty, formal, rehearsed) had already been disrupted (by speed, endurance, juxtaposition), but in doing so revealing another in its wake: the (nearly) touchable low-browness of the art academic performance. What is a girl to do when she has already looked away but finds herself looking at another mythic structure? And when the mythic structure itself is so subtle, so behind-the-scenes, so informal as to deny recognition? To exit this application would mean either finding a new focus, say, in the audience, leading me to wonder why should I want to exit the application anyway, especially at £25 a pop? And how has this format come to aquire this newfound status? Whilst education has always been at the heart of the knowledge economy, only of late has it aquired and capitalized on this new sexy image. At a time