Jordan Wolfson has been announced as the winner of the Cartier Award 2009 and will go on to produce a site-specific artwork for the Frieze Art Fair. His video works play on many themes but it's thought before these are discussed it would be valuable for you to read his contribution to the Whitney Biennial catalogue as an aid to thoughts within his mindset:
In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls—has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say, “Do not despair.” The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people will return to the people, and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish.... Soldiers—don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you—who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate—only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers—don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty. In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written “the kingdom of God is within man”—not one man, nor a group of men—but in all men—in you, the people. You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. 1
The above was included within the Whitney Biennial in which Wolfson presents, 'The Great Dictator', 2005, a black and white 16mm film which involves a 'Hollywood-esque tuxedoed' male figure signing Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940) - his first 'spoken' comedic spin about Nazi Germany. The shots focus on the speedy signs expressed by the man's hands cropping his head and legs. Direct attention is placed on the speed of his signing. You can now see how the above manifesto suits its subject. Chaplin was known to have caused a stir politically with his leftist views resulting in his possible exile. When you watch Wolfson's piece you can see where Mia Fineman identifies his, 'poetic conceptualism' 2, the actor in the piece almost presents the sign in a Chaplin like manner, artistically beautiful with a satirical twist, aided by the 'black and white' Chaplin related link of the tuxedo.There's lightness to its political roots, a beauty and comedy which keeps you interested. For the majority of us there does of course become a frustration or barrier in not being able to translate what the beauty is saying triggering an empathy and frustration towards the attempted silencing of Chaplin's political views through exile. Of course this then has wider implications for reality as reiterated in Wolfson's piece above. There's an irony that plays a wonderful part in the work in the sense that although Chaplin's views were attempted to be silenced it was originally his silence which gave him power in the film and financial world and now Wolfson is using that silence again to create powerful messages. The choice of film, 'The Great Dictator' being Chaplin's first 'spoken film' enhances this. It's interesting how you relate the piece to present times also as Wolfson here expresses the power previously that the state had over the media/celebrity in terms of control however nowadays the media world is becoming the higher power, you only have to think about what Joanna Lumley is doing for the Ghurkha's.
1 Wolfson, J., Jordan Wolfson, Altria, Deutsche Bank, Brilliant Blue, 2006, 16 May 2009 13:48:27, http://www.whitney.org/www/2006biennial/artists.php?artist=Wolfson_Jordan
2 Fineman, M., Jordan Wolfson, BeautyUser, OOKSA, New Retirement, 2006, 16 May 2009 14:25:06, http://www.slate.com/id/2137034/
The frustration created in lack of able translation for the majority in this piece creates feelings of isolation and 'lost voices' that makes you want to release the inner voice inside. What's enduring about Wolfson's work is the play he creates between the animated and the real, the humorous and the serious, the superficial and the real. The paradoxical play with animation to stamp the big serious questions into your mind reflects the power of the media in reality. In another work, 'Dreaming of the dream of the dream', 2004, Wolfson presents a 16mm film again in which different images of water from various animations are repeated within a silent one-minute loop from sunrise to sunset. It is looped continually until the film stock is destroyed and the artwork is no more. What dream is being dreamt of? Again here we have a reference to the fictional/fantasy in contrast to the purest reality of Mother Nature. When you read Wolfson's piece above and he discusses the loss of humanity in the world and the 'machine-men' controllers you can see how he reverts back to nature for sanity and balance. Does he think we've lost touch with nature or disrespect it's power? Is his use of silence a search for peace? In this piece the death of nature's cycle takes place as does a specific time cycle from the start of the day to the end of the day in 'nature's terms' conducted by the sun.
In 'Perfect Lover', 2007 Wolfson presents a film in which a solitary crow in various settings in a forest repeatedly announces the time every hour until midnight is reached. This time a second day is entered announced by the crow again before he starts hourly once more. The crow begins to deteriorate after an amount of time, counting out of order then stopping, has a cough, only to start again until he disappears into darkness. So many references to childhood are churned up within this piece, animated animals playing a key point to all children in storybooks, programs, the forest setting throwing you back through the wardrobe to Narnia. It's this escapist aspect, 'the dreaming of the dream' that pulls at your emotions yet this escapist euphoria is brought thumping back down to reality (like with all of his pieces) in this piece with a powerful melancholy, touched on in the previously discussed piece with the 'self-destructive' film. The melancholy rests in the crow, a known symbolism of death, Van Gogh's, 'Wheatfield with Crows', 1890 was believed to be his last work possibly foreseeing his death. This work also references Felix Gonzalez-Torres' work, 'Untitled (Perfect Lovers)', 1987-1990 showing two wall clocks set to the exact time, however as time ticks away they go in opposite directions and out of sync.A lot of Torres' work is said to be influenced by the power the death or separation of his partner to Aids had on him. With the crow known as the messenger of death it leaves us to question what is at death's door, is it soceity, our greed and misery, the 'machine-heads' he talks of controlling us. Is it only a matter of time before nature deteriorates and order is lost? The lightness of his work returns in the animated crow yet we are left to consider how funny he is actually or the melancholy of his message is? In a way you could say it reflects the power of the media to entice us, make us escape yet at the same time it may be destroying us? I relate to the media because it's a film-based work using 'narration'. However you could say he is referencing relationships in the title, 'perfect lover', the loss of a relationship over time, its idealistic fantasy as perfection and its melancholy or death? What seems perfect may be destructive? Where there's perfection there's also madness? Wolfson's work's are great in that they make you consider the relationship between idealism and reality in our world today (good and bad), they bring your mindset into the present through their direct realisation of time scale in relation to life and death. While they also reconnect you with the power players in life, love, nature, media, politics and their relationships. Who is the crow?...the media..politicians..love..are they in control of our time, our life, are they the death of us? Have they taken over nature as power player? Just questions but his combination of fiction and non-fiction are so dually fun in many aspects.
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