Time_Art_Impact Dialogue #11
Zuzanna Janin’s Poetics of Combat:
Beyond Victory and Defeat
Zuzanna Janin in dialogue with Lin Yu
19th April 2015
19:00
At MINSHENG ART MUSEUM, Shanghai
MOMENTUM Berlin and Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai are proud to present the collaborative project: Time_Art_Impact, a year-long education program of dialogues between media artists from the MOMENTUM Collection and key figures from the Shanghai art scene. Time_Art_Impact is the inaugural program of the new Media Library at Minsheng Art Museum, which will use the MOMENTUM Collection of international video art as a basis for a series of monthly cross-cultural dialogues via live-stream between Berlin, Shanghai and the rest of the world.
More information about the project here.
Read about the event on the MINSHENG ART MUSEUM web-site here.
ABOUT ZUZANNA JANIN
CV – Website – Douge Fishbone in MOMENTUM Collection
Zuzanna Janin, born in 1961 in Poland, is a visual artist and former teen actor. Having at one time starred in the Polish serial Szalenstwo Majki Skowron (Madness of Majka Skowron), Janin now uses her theatrical background to create sculpture, video, installation, photography and performances. Her work has been shown in a variety of spaces, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Foundation Miro, Barcelona, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, National Gallery Zacheta, Warsaw, Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Jeu de Pomme, Paris, Ludwig Museum, Aachen, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunsthalle, Bern, Hoffmann Sammlung, Berlin, and TT The THING, NY. Janin has also taken part in the Sydney Biennale, Istanbul Bienniale, Liverpool Biennale, and the 54th Venice Biennale.
PAX DE DEUX (2001)
With a title appropriated from ballet, Zuzanna Janin’s Pas De Deux (2001) revels in ambiguity. Shot in a jerking close-up of two pairs of legs in constant motion on a blank white background, we are drawn into what could be a dance as readily as a fight. It is a dialogue between two bodies, a give and take of power and physical space. It is also a different perspective on one of Janin’s best-known works, the video installation The Fight (IloveYouToo) (2001), where the slight, fragile looking artist takes on a professional heavyweight boxer. To create this work, Janin spent 6 months training with him in the ring. The boxing match in The Fight is real and harrowing to watch in its intensity.
The camera weaves in and out, dodging and feinting with the fighter’s blows, as close-up and personal as the physical act of combat. Yet for Janin, this combat between two mismatched opponents is also a dance, a language allowing two bodies to communicate. The direct perspective of the camera in The Fight draws us into the brutality of this uneven combat. But changing the perspective and dropping the camera to ground level suddenly reveals the ambiguity lurking beneath the violence. For Pas De Deux , Janin’s fight performance is shot with the intimacy of a camera moving with the two bodies as they follow the same motions as The Fight, but without seeing the blows. The violent mismatch is transfigured into a match, a term which in sports signifies a contest between opposing competitors, whilst in normal usage it means a harmonious pair.
THE FIGHT (2001)
Boxing involves direct physical confrontation – no complications, no excuses, no words. Mano a mano, here and now – boxing is combat in the abstract, stripped down to its bare essentials. This sublime distillate of combat is neutral and graciously embraces every projection. In The Champion boxing was a metaphor of the ruthless drive to succeed where each knocked-down opponent brings the hero closer to his goal : a glance into the dark side of the American Dream. Its flip-side was Rocky – by slugging away at slabs of meat in a slaughterhouse freezer its hero showed how determination, blood sweat and tears, and self-confidence can move mountains. As heavyweight Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull , Robert de Niro exposed the weakness latent within strength – if life is a struggle it always ends in defeat, because time is mercilessly working against the fighters. When the American Dadaist Arthur Cravan challenged the professional boxing champion of the time to an uneven contest, he was actually throwing down the gauntlet before the bloodless art of salons.
Joseph Beuys also stepped into the ring, at documenta V in Kassel, donning gloves on behalf of direct democracy – using his fists to prove that socially committed art was not an aesthetic concept but a real-life struggle taken up by artists wanting to change the world. In Zuzanna’s work, a woman and a man, the artist and professional boxer, are pitted against each other in identical white costumes and red training gloves. Their identical uniforms seem to suggest that both are on the same team. Zuzanna, a featherweight it would appear, is cast against a professional heavyweight boxer. The actual disproportion of strength does not matter: we are operating in arbitrary media space. A boxing champion is a TV celebrity, a semi-fictional character for most of us. Zuzanna likewise assumes the stance of a media heroine. Xena the Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lara Croft – pistol-packing daredevil, Trinity – Matrix martial-arts mistress, cybercop Motoko and other Girls have gotten us used to the idea that women in pop culture know how to stand up for themselves. Size and weight are irrelevant – everyone’s a fighter here….
ABOUT LIN YU
Lin Yu is a writer and art critic, editor of ArtReview Asia. Since she starts to work with the British art magazine ArtReview in 2013, she has founded its sister magazine ArtReview Asia, a critical magazine distributed in pan-Asia area. Prior to this position, she was the founding editor of LEAP (2009-2012). Her practice ranges from writing, editing, art and culture criticism to curating. Her recent curatorial project ‘Timur Si-Qin: Biogenic Mineral’ is now on show at Magician Space, Beijing until 17 May 2015. She currently lives and works in Shanghai.
Read about the event on MOMENTUM website.
