BACK TO THE FUTURE
- The retrospektive -
- The retrospektive -
These were pics I took of Marla on my phone at one of our barbeques in Baghdad
She wasn't really keen on them-She died April 16, 2005 in a car bomb on Airport Road
Two or three things I do NOT know about the SURVIVAL GROUP
(by Mike Douglas, in Trash Art)
What the hell (were we all, the media guys, wondering when the buzz about the next SURVIVAL GROUP Berlin show began to spread on the web) will they deliver this time? How to figure this out of nothing? Followed a few brain-storming -or more accurately- headache nights in front of my computer screen : let's see... what can I find about it... not much... only some odd words « new agency, social cohesion, arms » raving on the net...
After 10 years of experimentations, manifestations, happenings, etc. the SURVIVAL GROUP is, still, an UFO. What do we know about SG? Nothing we could take for granted! Or maybe this to the least : SG is an open concept, an informal entity with no regular members, well, SG is nothing we could handle or describe, nothing on what we could build a simple bamboo hut... Sometimes the SG looks more like a possibility than like a fact, OK, but then, sometimes it happens and it happens here and now.
One morning I decided to jump on the ring and to punch the problem on the nose. Around twelve, one hundred calls later, I was talking on skype with a pixelised-face dude who told me (and the voice too was kind of pixelised) : « you know, all what we do is for real, I mean it's not about art... (10 seconds)... Anyway everything is for real in a way or in an other, no? ... (5 seconds) ...so actually the very question is : where does end reality and begin fiction... » Well thank's Mister SG it was exactly what I was wondering about. Where begins fiction? And again : is art fiction? or is it for real? So, OK! Now we know about the question... what about the answer?
Is it art or is it for real? One could write two hundred pages on this issue... (and those pages will find their place somewhere on a dusty shelf, inside the non ending line of statements dedicated to the matter) without answering the question. But... to paraphrase old Mac Luhan, if the question WAS the answer? Let's look at it closely. The little we know about SG is that the group's strategy is a lot more pragmatical than aesthetical : it's all about the way of DOING.
(by Mike Douglas, in Trash Art)
What the hell (were we all, the media guys, wondering when the buzz about the next SURVIVAL GROUP Berlin show began to spread on the web) will they deliver this time? How to figure this out of nothing? Followed a few brain-storming -or more accurately- headache nights in front of my computer screen : let's see... what can I find about it... not much... only some odd words « new agency, social cohesion, arms » raving on the net...
After 10 years of experimentations, manifestations, happenings, etc. the SURVIVAL GROUP is, still, an UFO. What do we know about SG? Nothing we could take for granted! Or maybe this to the least : SG is an open concept, an informal entity with no regular members, well, SG is nothing we could handle or describe, nothing on what we could build a simple bamboo hut... Sometimes the SG looks more like a possibility than like a fact, OK, but then, sometimes it happens and it happens here and now.
One morning I decided to jump on the ring and to punch the problem on the nose. Around twelve, one hundred calls later, I was talking on skype with a pixelised-face dude who told me (and the voice too was kind of pixelised) : « you know, all what we do is for real, I mean it's not about art... (10 seconds)... Anyway everything is for real in a way or in an other, no? ... (5 seconds) ...so actually the very question is : where does end reality and begin fiction... » Well thank's Mister SG it was exactly what I was wondering about. Where begins fiction? And again : is art fiction? or is it for real? So, OK! Now we know about the question... what about the answer?
Is it art or is it for real? One could write two hundred pages on this issue... (and those pages will find their place somewhere on a dusty shelf, inside the non ending line of statements dedicated to the matter) without answering the question. But... to paraphrase old Mac Luhan, if the question WAS the answer? Let's look at it closely. The little we know about SG is that the group's strategy is a lot more pragmatical than aesthetical : it's all about the way of DOING.
And, (maybe HERE stands our fugitive answer) If what you DO and the way you DO it (including how to handle the economical, political, social or sexual issues) is NOT exactly the post-capitalistic way, THEN maybe the only word for it (before we'll be able to find a better one) IS 'ART'. What does it mean? It means it is 'ART', only because we can't yet recognize it like something else, like 'LIFE'. And why can't we? Because we're night and day wearing our good old glasses, and those glasses are focused on the past. As a matter of fact, the SG do not believe in the possibility of using art for changing the world. Thus, they prefer to change the world, and then possibly call it art.
In their always very unexpected way of doing, the freedom (the aesthetically uncorrectness) SG makes the proof is obviously not due to ignorance (ignorance of rules, ignorance of history) but more probably is the consequence of a real lack of interest in the success strategies. No need to add that for me, for the art-scene scrutinizer that I am, a so bewildering complete lack of interest is something very new... and thus, very exciting... It's like the SG members were extra-earthly or genetically-modified buddies and they can't survive one minute our complex, constraining and self-constraining social control laws. In immersion in this unbreathable (to the least for them, and maybe for some more guys like you and me) atmosphere, their challenge is to create very fast an oxygen (or I-dont-know-what-kind-of unknown gaz) buble.
So the survival is, matter of fact, the central thing and, among others strategies like morphogenesis, they use their strike-and-run capabilities, disapearing somewhere and showing-up suddenly where nobody is waiting for them. They hit the target very fast and they're gone! The french artist Robert Filiou's leitmotiv (vite fait / bien fait – vite fait / mal fait – vite fait / pas fait) could be their motto (or could be yours! sighs the disapointed reader of this poor contribution).
Berlin, Mars 2007
In their always very unexpected way of doing, the freedom (the aesthetically uncorrectness) SG makes the proof is obviously not due to ignorance (ignorance of rules, ignorance of history) but more probably is the consequence of a real lack of interest in the success strategies. No need to add that for me, for the art-scene scrutinizer that I am, a so bewildering complete lack of interest is something very new... and thus, very exciting... It's like the SG members were extra-earthly or genetically-modified buddies and they can't survive one minute our complex, constraining and self-constraining social control laws. In immersion in this unbreathable (to the least for them, and maybe for some more guys like you and me) atmosphere, their challenge is to create very fast an oxygen (or I-dont-know-what-kind-of unknown gaz) buble.
So the survival is, matter of fact, the central thing and, among others strategies like morphogenesis, they use their strike-and-run capabilities, disapearing somewhere and showing-up suddenly where nobody is waiting for them. They hit the target very fast and they're gone! The french artist Robert Filiou's leitmotiv (vite fait / bien fait – vite fait / mal fait – vite fait / pas fait) could be their motto (or could be yours! sighs the disapointed reader of this poor contribution).
Berlin, Mars 2007
Survival Group :
Sophie Giraud
David Cousinard
Eric morel
Lorentino
Julia Varga
Florian brochec
Remi Marie
Guillaume Schaller
Julie Genelin
Arnaud Elfort
Dominik Schumacher
Caroline Pradal
Sophie Giraud
David Cousinard
Eric morel
Lorentino
Julia Varga
Florian brochec
Remi Marie
Guillaume Schaller
Julie Genelin
Arnaud Elfort
Dominik Schumacher
Caroline Pradal