Portfolio 2007-2008

Scream Freeway, Free West The War Correspondent The Artist Posing as her Ego Ha Ha Annemieke Teresa van Twuijver 2008 DOGtime/02

Scream a short epic about voicelessness, desire and being shy In four parts

Scream #1 a play with no words to be staged in a theatre

Scream #2 performance (no registration) 23/09/2008, 20.15 hrs duration: 87’ Woman stands in light circle of four 1000 watt spotlights placed on the oor (central in the project space). Head is covered in black cloth (face invisible). Woman does not move and does not communicate with spectators. Performance ends when woman collapses.

Sculpture inspired by Scream #2. Bucket, iron tubes, Duct tape, armature, light bulbs, solid coconut cream (melting), washing bags. 56 x 38 x 38 cm.

Scream #3 video performance 21’36” (real time) looped

X Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need I love thee . . . mark! . . . I love thee--in thy sight I stand transfigured, glorified aright, With conscience of the new rays that proceed Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures Who love God, God accepts while loving so.

And what I led, across the inferior features Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show How that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.

Scream #4 video 1’56” Sonnet by: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Read by: Jaap Heyer

Freeway, Free West reflections on the highway

Road Runner video performance 27� A2 Hannover-Berlin

freeway, free west (updated) road-runner-mp4 Die Anlage des Berliner Rings geht zurück auf Albert Speers “Generalentwicklungsplan”, der ein gigantisches System von Ringautobahnen mit strahlenförmig davon ausgehenden Fernstraßen um Berlin vorsah. Bis Kriegsende konnte allerdings nur ein Teil (128 km) des Außenrings verwirklicht werden. Die Schließung des Berliner Rings mit einer Gesamtlänge von 195,8 km erfolgte erst 1979 mit der Fertigstellung des Teilstücks Potsdam/Nord-Nauen-Falkensee-Abzweig Rostock (=AD Havelland). Als es noch zwei deutsche Staaten gab und Berlin eine geteilte Stadt war, kam der A 2/A 10 eine überaus wichtige Funktion einer Transitverbindung zwischen dem Bundesgebiet und West-Berlin zu. Das Autobahnteilstück Marienborn/Helmstedt - Dreilinden war die kürzeste Straßenverbindung zwischen WestBerlin und dem damaligen Gebiet der Bundesrepublik. Da die DDR-Behörden ab September 1951 bis zum Inkrafttreten des Transitabkommens 1971 nach Entfernung gestaffelte Straßenbenutzungsgebühren erhoben, die jeder Kraftfahrer individuell zu entrichten hatte, lag es nahe, diesen kürzesten Weg zu wählen.

Who would be surprised if Albert Speer’s dream of everlasting supremacy of Das Reich indeed included the idea that all major roads in Europe should lead to Berlin, like formerly all roads led to Rome? In such a scheme, there is no way to travel and not to end up, eventually, in the most important city of them all, the ideological, political and military HQ. Speer failed, Das Reich crumbled. Not all roads lead to Berlin, just some. And every traveller can choose to take that road - or not.

Roads - as a fixed route to travel from and to a fixed destinaton - came into existence approximately 8000 BC, when the first town in history, Jericho, raised itself on the elevated grounds near the springs of Elisha. The raise of Jericho may be considered the cradle of civilisation: ‘the village’ as a civic construction for living together as a group calls for the specific system of social engagement and rules that is called ’social order’. In the village people ’specialise’ into bakers, butchers, haberdashers, and so on, and therefore enter neccessary interdepend relations that are essential for survival, which also means they will have to find an agreement or a certain concensus about decisions that concern all. (This is the cradle of politics.) After Jericho more urban settlements followed and more roads were built to connect them. In his book ‘Ways of the World’ (1992), M.G. Lay argues that in times of peace roads became the foundation of trade (better said economy) between settlements. Trade benefits from freedom as a means to do good business. A tradesman likes to choose his best market. Roads and freedom go hand in hand, like cities and civilisation.

Ways of the World. A History of World’s Roads and the VehiclesThat Used Them by M.G. Lay: http://books.google.nl/books?id=flvS-nJga8QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=ways+of+the+world&ei=ylETSfmtDp6QswOtl7G1Ag) Marshall McLuhan in his groundbreaking work ‘ Understanding Media: The Extentions of Man’ (1964) looks at the origin of roads from a totally different perspective. He argues that when man invented the wheel, the wheel called for roads in order to use it. The wheel required ‘road for its completion’. And when roads were subsequenty built, they needed to have a purpose attached to them as well. Therefore settlements were built to complete the roads. McLuhan even suggests that in the Thirteenth century suddenly more roads and more cities developed because somebody invented the horse collar, which led to the creation of the four wheel wagon with pivoted front axles, brakes and the capacity to carry heavier loads (to complete the horse collar), which led to more trade and more travel (to complete the four wheel wagon), which led to more roads and more cities (to complete the increased rate of trade and travel). According to this theory, the system of roads and cities, also seen as the backbone of civilisation, was a rather organic but inevitable consequence of the invention of the wheel.

McLuhan is of the opinion that the road is our major architectural form.

The full text of ‘Understanding Media: The Extentions of Man’ can be found on the website Cult of Jim: http://cultofjim.com/scripture/understanding_media/ McLuhans basic assumption is that every extention of the body (i.e. every ‘technical’ invention) focusses on scale and exhiliration in order for humans to gain more power. ‘To extend our bodily postures and motions into new materials, by way of amplification, is a constant drive for more power’. Things constantly become ‘more’ accordingly. In the course of history, technological ‘extentions’ have become bigger and faster. Wagons developed into cars, roads developed into freeways.

The word ‘freeway’ was coined in the mid-1930’s in the United States. It refers to a road that is designed exclusively for high speed motor vehicles, with no access for other kinds of wheel-based travel means, like bicycles and trains. Cross traffic is eliminated and railway crossings are removed. There are basically no stop signs of traffic lights.

The freeway system is the foundation of the free West. It is an array of arteries that connects cities, countries and continents. One can travel from A to B, or from Amsterdam to Berlin, at will and at leisure.

The freeway forms the connection between people’s habitats – villages, towns, cities and capitals – and people’s enterprises – industry, business, retail and consuming. As such, the freeway can be considered the ‘life line’ for urban existence, especially in the so-called West, where urban life is more prominent than country life.

The freeway is accessible to all people. Everybody who drives a car makes use of the freeway (and in the free West this group forms the bulk of topulation - Marshall McLuhan states that for youngsters it is considered to be more important to reach the age of being able to hold a driver’s license than to reach the age to vote). It is always busy on the freeway, day and night, especially during rush hours. The freeway is the highest frequented public space in modern society: during the span of 24 hours it is visited by more people than say a public square in a big city, a train station or an international airport. The stream of people (cars) is endless; never stopping and never varying.

Jean Baudrillard, who travelled extensively in the United States and wrote essays about his observations, called this company of people on the freeway - mostly strangers - the ‘real and only’ society, the warm and comforting suggestion of a never changing phenomenon - ‘the collective compulsion of lemmings massively committing suicide’. He went to America first and foremost to look for the ‘emtpy, absolute freedom of the freeways’: ‘I went in search of astral America, not social and cultural America, but the America of the empty, absolute freedom of the freeways, not the deep America of mores and mentalities, but the America of desert speed, of motels and mineral surfaces. I looked for it in the speed of the screenplay, in the indifferent reflex of television, in the film of days and nights projected across an empty space, in the marvellously affectless succession of signs, images, faces, and ritual acts on the road; looked for what was nearest to the nuclear and enucleated universe, a universe which is virtually our own, right down to its European cottages.’ http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-america-excerpts2.html Even though Baudrillard calls the freeway ‘the real society’, it is devoid of the contacts and communications that usually define a ’social order’ or society. Moreover, it is not meant to have such communications. Serving as an artery, it should stay ‘unclogged’ to vouchsafe unobstructed transport. The freeway is not constructed for human contact but for human transport. Therefore a freeway is divided in two seperate parts that do not merge (one stream going from A to B and one stream going in the opposite direction from B to A). Users of the freeway are in transit, locked in their own private world of travelling by motor car. When they stop by choice, it is only to take a break from the driving to eat, drink, urinate, rest or sleep.

In this way the freeway is uniquely different from other public spaces, like public squares in cities, train stations and international airports. Freeways do not entice, invite or encourage people to make contact with each other. In a sense, the freeway is the herald of individualism. People are crammed on the freeway, but people do not ‘meet’ on the freeway.

With the following exceptions. These occurrances can be divided into five categories 1. Situations that lead people to meet and communicate on the freeway: unusual or enduring traffic jams road blocks detours accidents breakdowns; technical, mental or otherwise road rage (‘bumper harassment’, ‘the new york second’) shoulder camping police or military hold ups armed robbery suicide attempts; successfully, unsuccessfully or otherwise road kill car chases violent attacks; terrorist, juvenile or otherwise war 2. Lifestyles and living conditions that induce regular social interaction between people on the freeway, typically outsiders or even outcasts of mainstream Western society such as: easy riders/hell’s angels gypsies poor people serial killers gay men cruising border jumpers drifters going nowhere addicts, glue or gasoline runaway children fancy car spotters lovers; newly, secret or otherwise road buddies; Thelma and Louise or otherwise activists; antiglobalists, euro-farmers or otherwise 3. People who make special use of the freeway and are more likely to communicate with other people on the freeway: hitch hikers tourists and day trippers truck drivers construction workers artists Tour de France-cyclists journalists looking for stories; traffic-related or otherwise 4. Places in the vicinity of the freeway that give people a chance to meet: highway cafe’s and hotels parkings gas stations photo opportunity spots 5. Media spectacles (i.e. mobile phone holding fugitives; criminal, political, economical or otherwise) http://theory.ideacritik.com

The War Correspondent a curious distribution of the sensible political

The War Correspondent installation (beamed footage 1�53� looped, writing on the wall)

Quick & Dirty Group Exhibition Contributing artists: Daphne A. Koopman Marlon van der Pas Marieke Greeve Annemieke Teresa van Twui

No Remorse for Casualties sculpture washing bag, elastic bands, iron hooks, armature, light bulb, processed coconut cream.

380 x 40 x 28 cm.

painted wood, construction box airplanes and helicopters, rubber coated wire 278 x 134 x 87 cm

Moletsi Kwalemotu (1971, Rwanda) Cassave #3

Rubber Bullet, Rubber Bullet video sculpture cell phone MP4 2’34” looped projection size 500 x 400 cm

The Artist Posing as her Ego self as fiction

about: persona

(previous page) Clothes as they were put down just before their owner went to bed With many thanks to: Angèle Jay Irène Henk Terri Hukam Dirk Janieta Peter en Lara Marisa Vèronique Hein Jesper Loïs Daphne Eddie

In the study of communication, persona [edit]Imaginary Formation is a term given to describe the versions The ego is thus an imaginary formaof self that all individuals possess. tion, as opposed to the subject, which is Behaviours are selected according to a product of the symbolic.[7] the desired impression an individual wishes to create when interacting with [edit]Méconnaissance other people. Therefore, personae preIndeed, the ego is precisely a sented to other people vary according méconnaissance of the symbolic order, to the social environment the person is the seat of resistance. engaged in, in particular the persona presented before others will differ from [edit]Symptom the persona an individual will present The ego is structured like a symptom: when he/she happens to be alone.

“The ego is structured exactly like a symptom. At the heart of the subject, it Carl Jung said that, ‘The persona is that is only a privileged which in reality one is not, but which symptom, the human symptom oneself as well as others think one is.” par excellence, the mental illness of Robert Johnson refers to the persona man.”[8] as our “psychological clothing.” The [edit]Analytic Treatment persona refers to that aspect of the ego that we present to the world for its Lacan is therefore totally opposed to approval. It is like a mask and we can the idea, current in ego-psychology, hide behind it. that the aim of psychoanalytic treatment is to strengthen the ego.

Center of the Subject Since the ego is “the seat of illlusions”,[9] Lacan argues that Freud’s discovery of the unconscious removed the ego from to increase its strength would only succeed in increasing the subject’s the central position to which western alienation. philosophy, at least since Descartes, had traditionally assigned it. [edit]Resistance Lacan also argues that the proponents of ego-psychology betrayed Freud’s The ego is also the source of resistance radical discovery by relocating the ego to psychoanalytic treatment, and thus as the center of the subject. to strengthen it would only increase In opposition to this school of thought, those resistances.

Lacan maintains that the ego is not Because of its imaginary fixity, the ego at the center, that the ego is in fact an is resistant to all subjective growth and object. change, and to the dialectical movement of desire. [edit]Identification By undermining the fixity of the The ego is a construction which is ego, psychoanalytic treatment aims formed by identification with the to restore the dialectic of desire and specular image in the Mirror stage. reinitiate the coming-into-being of the subject. [edit]Alienation It is thus the place where the subject [edit]Adaptation becomes alienated from himself, transLacan is opposed to the egoforming himself into the counterpart. psychology view which takes the ego of the analysand to be the ally [edit]Paranoiac Structure of the analyst in the treatment.

This alienation on which the ego is He also rejects the view that the based is structurally similar to paraaim of psychoanalytic treatment is to noia, which is why Lacan writes that promote the adaptation of the ego to the ego has a paranoiac structure.[6] reality.

The Artist Posing as her Ego snap shot (no PSH) coated xerox on foam board 42 x 59 cm photography Janne renout

Ha Ha animated by the spectator

painted raincoat, black tub (hung from ceiling), drawings on Japanese paper, wire 150 x 95 x 53 cm - spectator must kick tub to set animation in motion