ștefan botez

Intimacy in Public Space

2011-07-22T13:55:00.001-07:00

Jenny Holzer

Intimacy in Public Space / excerpts

The piece of Jenny Holzer was looking like a lost street plate on the white walls of the Mamco Museum in Geneva. I remember being surprised by it, by its way of questioning the concepts of interior and exterior. Not only through its shape and placement, but also and mostly through the engraving that it bears; which speaks about the penetration of the body by an exterior element/person, a lover, a doctor.

The penetration of the body is an act of extreme intimacy, since intimacy is that which we carry with us, in us, all the time; it is the most hidden and secret part of ourselves, and, like our soul, it can be broken.

But like the soul, intimacy is not something that lingers inside us, more likely it is something that envelops us, our bodies, it is our aura if you will, our pheromones, our smell. I see it functioning rather as a bridge between the interior and the immediate exterior, or as an invisible barrier/wall that protects the integrity of our bodies in their perpetual motion.

This immediate exterior realm is extremely subjective, and the physical distances that we try to keep from one another are deeply influenced by subtle cultural rules.

Like gravity the influence of two bodies on each other is inversely proportional not only to the square of their distance but possibly even the cube of the distance between them.

I would like to reflect a bit upon the construction “...for the first time.” Because we are all afraid when knowing that our bodies are going to be penetrated, when our frail carcass is going to be cut. But in the case of sex, this fear transforms itself into pleasure, excitement and joy, while the idea of surgery will always remain unpleasant. This aspect makes me think at the fabled boundary between the feeling of fear and the feeling of pleasure. The difference standing in the interpretation that our brain gives, or more likely was trained to give in a certain situation. Training, repetition creates automatism, instincts if you will. I have experienced this while writing more than 200 times the same thing during the making of I Miss You, but also in reference to the reactions towards Public Sleeper or Fire, in both cases the shape and image created being completely ignored leaving space for what it was trained to manifest.

I think that intimacy, this most secret and hidden part of our being, triggers fear instinctively while shared or touched. Maybe that’s the reason why we go so far in order to find out who we are, instead of searching right here or better said in here.

I’ve chosen intimacy as a subject, because it was a concept that I’d started to explore in my practice since my days back in Bucharest. I thought it was interesting to push it further, to submit it to the tensions that built up in public space: in other words, to test it.

I decided to explore Geneva’s public space by creating three projects which have to do in some parts with the idea of intimacy, but not exclusively.

On the other hand, I thought that it makes sense, as a foreigner and, even more, as a newcomer to do it, signalling my presence in a way, appropriating the new space, the new city, the new society, thus exploring its territories and surfaces. Getting to know, living the place before inhabiting it.

I decided to split the notion of intimacy in three main layers according to each project:

1 the Outer Layer - Fire

2 the Inner Layer - Mi-e dor de tine/I Miss You

3 the Deep Layer - Public Sleeper

Installation view HEAD, Geneva, 2011

Fire

2011-07-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

series of 5 videos
variable length, infinite loop, with sound

The fire burns and consumes, thus being a perfect recipient for our most intimate secrets,as shown by Gus Van Sant in Paranoid Park, where Alex, a teenage skater, feeds his murder confession to the fire.

Most likely discovered by accident 1.9 million years ago, the fire hasn’t been used in a controlled fashion by the human species until 400,000 years ago. The ancient Greeks believed that Prometheus, stole the fire from the gods and gave it to the mortal kin as a gift. While, in his Analogy of the cave, Plato uses it as a device of deception that projects faulty shadows on the cave’s walls, tricking its inhabitants.

Due to its state of aggregation, its heat and light, the fire was often used by humans to signal danger, their presence, or gather around it to warm themselves. Like this the fire becomes a generator of tensions and exchange standing at the foundation of our society. The fire is the origin and engine of our civilization, evolution and development, but as Lev Grossman says at the end of his article 2045: The year man becomes immortal, for Time magazine, to comprehend this evolution and foresee the future you have to think very, very far outside the box. Or maybe you have to think further inside it than anyone ever has before.

Mi-e dor de tine/I Miss You

2011-07-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

Mi-e dor de tine/I miss you, explores the feeling of void through a series of images based on a public space intervention that took place between Geneva and Versoix.

The purpose, to test if a message as personal, private, intimate, as I miss you can go from A to B. A is leaving traces, is marking/mapping a specific territory, and, in doing so, A hopes that B will see the signs and decode the message.

The intervention consists in post-its on which I have written I miss you (in Romanian) and then pasted them throughout the city. Like basic graffiti, when two lovers write their names on one of Eiffel Tower’s legs, A+B=LOVE. But there’s nothing permanent here, there is no total attribution, occupation of that place, surface, space. Like feelings, post-its wither away. And ultimately, everyone who encountered the post-its could have, if he/she wished, decoded the message; thus B becomes everyone.

I have written I miss you more than 200 times, so many times that the words and their meaning dissolved, formatting/lobotomizing the brain. Like in the movie Pontypool, where the cure for the disease was found in language itself, in culture, in the meaning and understanding of the words. Once the words and their letters are scrambled the meaning dissipates, and then...

There is nothing, silence.

In the end the post-it stands as a cut-out in a selected reality, in a digital image, the memory of a gesture, questioning the way we attach (paste) ourselves to people, places and images.

I Miss You at Desire is War, Brukenthal, Sibiu, Romania
exhibition shots by Stefan Jammer

Public Sleeper

2011-07-11T10:44:00.001-07:00

performance, Plain Palais, Geneva, 2011
documented by: Roxana Sima

the Observer:

The first thing that came into mind when you went to sleep and I remained basically alone, was how to position myself. Both for security as well as for observational reasons, I needed light to document, to take pictures, to draw, to write. I have to say that the plain of Plain Palais is a strange place at night, populated by drug dealers, and drunk people

I found it impossible to take pictures of the people that have interacted with me that night. I thought that, that way, I would have created a filter, a breach in the spontaneity of the gesture, and I didn’t want to transform the process of documentation into a touristic event.

From my point of view the event was not the interactions that it caused, but the simple fact that you were sleeping in the street. You, a student, sleeping in the street made me think about the housing problems Geneva has.

I liked how you were looking in the sleeping bag. You were an exotic shape, something you won’t usually find in that place, this being one of the reasons that attracted the attention of the passers-by. I was excited by the idea that you could have been anything, from a corpse abandoned in a bag – making me think about the American serial killers, and what is going on now in New York – to an elephant swallowed by a snake. Both hypotheses were possible.

I was afraid.

I was afraid of the people that came by and interacted with me. I find it normal; in a way the plain reminds me of the wide opened, vacant places you can find in Romania.

The first passer-by that interacted with me was a young drunk man. I’ve recognized him from the artistic social circles. At first it was just a supposition that his reaction transformed into certainty.

“What do we have here!?” He cried. “Is this a happening?”

“No, it is a performance” I replied.

He sat on you, I’m still amazed that you didn’t feel him.

“Now I’m part of it.” He said. “Will you intervene if I was to crack his skull?” He asked while raising his foot over your head.

“Sure I will.” I replied.

“Why? If you’re doing this, it means you assume it.” He said.

“We do, but you are provoking a situation knowing its parameters so I will be forced to stop you.” I said.

He lowered his foot on the ground. He looked at your face, he touched your ears. He said you are cute and have nice ears. Then he went away saying that he will return with a scooter to run you over.

The second guy I interacted with was from Kosovo. He stayed there while smoking a cigarette.I remember him looking at you sleeping as if he was watching two cars colliding in the middle of the street. He was strange; he didn’t know much English or French which made the interaction with him difficult and bizarre. I remember hiding my phone, because I was taking pictures when he came. The first thing he asked me, was if you are Romanian. Afterwards we talked a little bit about the drug dealers which were fighting in a dark corner of the plain. After finishing his cigarette he disappeared into the night.

He made me think about the perception we have about minorities in Geneva. About the way we create stereotypes. I’ve started questioning myself, my fear. I don’t know if I was more afraid of him when I found out he is from Kosovo, because I didn’t feel comfortable in his presence from the beginning. The fact that we couldn’t really speak created a state of tension.

But now, thinking back at that moment, I think that the first guy could have been able to put you in danger much more than the second.

I thought also about the image Romanians have here. Romanians are the public sleepers. And even though I know that the plain of Plain Palais is known as the place were Romanians are sleeping, I’m still amazed that the first connection that he made when finding out that there is someone sleeping in the sleeping bag was to think that it was a Romanian. It is funny because it actually was. But the image of you sleeping in your sleeping bag under the lamp post has nothing to do with the image Romanians have while doing the same thing.

The third and last interaction that happened that night was with a guy from the Ivory Coast. Like the guy from Kosovo, the first reaction he had when finding out there someone sleeping there under the lamp post, was to ask if you are Romanian. We discussed a little about the problem related to Romanians in Geneva as well as about the problems going on right now in the Ivory Coast. Then he went away.

In the end, I could say I’m glad I did this for you, this documentation, but it is something which

I would probably never do again.

It was physically challenging, because of the cold and my physiological needs. And not being part of it, having to keep the distance as an observer made the passing of time extremely difficult.

Teach Me How to Fight

2011-07-11T10:18:00.000-07:00

video by Ștefan Botez and Daniel G.S.

8'04", infinite loop with sound,
filmed by Marius Mihordescu,
edited by Ștefan Botez

thanks to Duna si Ștefan from the Calarași boxing club

In their study Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning connect the explosion and rapid spread of the sport phenomenon (sports as part of education in schools and in the military and also as entertainment) at the beginning of the 19th century with the process of industrialization. A way of expressing violence, physical violence, in a society which conquered by technological development lost this right.

As one of the most violent contact sports, boxing was not even considered as a leisure activity at the beginning of the 19th century, but a war training.

Inspired by Nicolai Howalt’s Boxer series, where the artist makes portraits of teenage boxers before and after the training, Teach me how to fight documents exactly that, what happens between the moments the shots were taken. Violence is shown in Howalt’s pictures just by details of expressions, faces showing fatigue, fear, sometimes drops of blood and sweat, sweat is always present.The series is extremely personal because Howalt did box himself as a teenager, but the images of young boys covered in sweat, blood and fear, can push us into thinking about homoeroticism? Yes, but also as in Golding’s Lord of the Flies, about violence as a given fact, as a general human feature, as a general male feature and as a need. And if there is a need, this need should/has to be expressed, and educated.

As in skateboarding, boxers learn from watching other boxers how they move and fight but unlike skaters they learn from watching themselves. The mirror is an important object in a boxer’s training. As in dancing, posture, the image of the self, makes the movements accurate, precise and effective.

Teach me how to fight intrudes on a small boxing club of Calarasi Romania trying to understand Nicolai Howalt’s images, and how boxing contributes to the male image in general. But visually it distance itself from the cold aseptic view of Howalt’s series, diving into a more intimate kind of aesthetics which reminds of Collier Schorr’s wrestlers. She describes her expirience of documenting the wrestling universe as a dance, ducking and crouching to protect herself from the hits and to get as close as it was necessary to take the shots.

Speaking about dance, and taking into consideration the mirror which acts as a doorway between this two apparently so different worlds. Teach me how to fight makes also reference to Ali Kazma’s Dance Company. Not to think that boxers look like dancers, although sometimes they do, but the lack of dialogue and the abrupt cuts transforms the material into something which is ready to step out the realm of documenting and step in to the field of fiction.

Rozalb de Mura, review, street shots

2011-07-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

snapshots/documentary

2011-07-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

Boys

2011-07-11T09:07:00.000-07:00

In his Self Portraits series, artist Jack Pierson transposes himself into different boys. The boys he wishes to be.

Or be with?

A question I'm trying to explore through a series of portraits/self portraits, Boys.
The juxtaposed images remind of photographer Nicolai Howalt's series Boxer.
But here the space separating the images is smaller, the line is thinner, thus speaking about narcissism or maybe the wish for it?

As in both Boxer and Self Portraits, Boys explores masculinity, but there is no violence here,turning more towards intimacy, the series tries to explore what it feels like to be a boy being with a boy.

Skating

2011-07-11T08:52:00.000-07:00

Both Autumn Landscape/Half Pipe and Jump Sequence came out of the same raw video material. And both of them are based on what a skater, Ryn Reid, said for heckler magazine when explaining the sense of being a skater:

To me an image is like when you’re standing in a room with two mirrors opposite each other. The first image is you and all the rest are those people who reflect parts of you they choose to carry with them.

Autumn landscape/Half pipe speaks more about the idea of reflection, and the hypnotising/pendulum effect that skateboarders inflict upon their viewers. While Jump Sequence explores the idea of decomposing and recomposing an image.

Autumn Landscape/Half Pipe

2011-07-11T08:40:00.000-07:00

2 screen video installation
with sound
infinite loop

Jump Sequence

2011-07-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

collage after video sequence

Rozalb de Mura for Absolut

2011-07-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

text: rozalb de mura

In a world hypnotized by the iris of a coin, the artist creates little absolutes wrapped in pink. Nobody will pass the dam stone of this silent hysteria. Aseptic art for a world that ignores wear. Happy life, happy art.

Shrouded in the indecent cloak of his obedient past, will he betray the iris of the god fixed upon him?

Finally he breaks all of the past's soulless statues, and from their broken pieces he starts weaving a coat that penetrates his skin. Every piece is the living reverberation of a broken dream: the true absolute world.

Shadow Writing

2011-07-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

Bio

2011-07-11T06:33:00.000-07:00

Stefan Botez (1983) is an artist working preponderantly with photography and video, exploring the various ways of creating and manipulating image. He finished his studies in Architecture at the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest, Romania. Afterwards he continued studying visual arts, being part of the one year postgraduate program ALPes at the Geneva University of Art and Design. Program focused on the implementation of art practices in public space. During this year Stefan Botez developed a trilogy that explores intimacy and its relation with public space, through various mediums, from photographic image to drawing and text. One of the three projects Mi-e dor de tine/I miss you was selected for the 2011 Desire is War exhibition at the Brukenthal National Museum of Art, Sibiu, Romania.

Some of his early work was shown in London at the Westbourne Studios (2007), SULUV gallery in Novi Sad, Serbia (2007), Okuparte Festival, Huesca, Spain (2004). In the last years he collaborated closely with the art/fashion collective Rozalb de Mura, which introduced him to Loredana Groza, for which he did live visuals during her Sundance tour.