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Saturday, December 22, 2007

Bearlin - Mark Wallinger, bears, war protest and a pince of Turner prize

Posted by seiinod at 5:12 PM

Berlin, 5th of December 2006 Zoologischer Garten, calls attention to world media. Knut is born. Rejected by his mother at birth, this baby polar bear was the first polar bear cub to survive past infancy at the Berlin Zoo in over thirty years. Raised by zoo keepers, he became a major "touristic attraction".

Because Berlin loves Bears... You can find thousands of them, both in very official places and in some of the oddest corners of the city. Among many of them, reappropriated by artists, advertisers and therefore tourists, the black bear on Berlin's flag is the one that conclusively binds the animal with it's cultural identity.

Walk along Unter den Linden and try to define a taxonomy of the many "by-products" which shows the bear in countless funny situations... Mugs, T-shirts, pens, postcards... Bring something from Berlin? Bring a bear! So, what would be the ultimate tourist experience if not getting transformed into a bear?

And here comes the winner of the Turner Prize which, each year, awards a contemporary artist living or working in the U.K.:
In the framework of his performance called 'Sleeper' (double agent in the cold-war espionage context), Mark Wallinger dressed as a bear, walked on the huge ground floor space of the Neue National gallery for ten consecutive nights.
As written in the exhibition catalogue "The work develops the artist's interest in the idea of transmutation by exploring the mechanics that underpin Berlin's civic symbolism."
I think that Knut (who sleeps in a cage 15 minutes by walk away from the gallery), would tell you a lot about what it is to be a stranger adorning the local cultural attributes if he could talk.

The title also gives clue to the viewer to understand the artwork. Although divided for many years, the city is currently building an identity based upon both east and west cultures. Berlin shows to millions of tourists, its scars as a solid proof of it's notorious history (fragments of wall, differences in the architecture style of buildings on both sides...), but do not exhibits what is left to the city's consciousness as those things do not record on photographic film. I believe that the artwork comes here more than with everything else as a channel of communication, an interface that makes all this reflection... recordable.
The 'sleepers' were double agents forced to adopt plausible disguises, to adopt foreign customs in order to gain locals' trust.
I guess that this artwork will have a specific impact on those who lived and/or worked in a foreign country... Imagine what happened in people's mind when the wall felt down from this perspective; when you become a stranger in your own home... But people from Berlin would tell you this sad tale better than me.

In fact, and although sleeper's footage is currently exhibited at Tate Liverpool, this is not this artwork that the Turner Prize jury awarded. The winner project is called State Britain and recreates the peace campaigner Brian Haw's anti-war protest in Parliament Square. You probably saw it if you visited London and therefore Big-Ben, two steps away from Brian Haw's camp. Precise in every details, from the tea-making area to the numerous banners, flags, photographs and posters, Wallinger apparently hired 14 people for six months to source the materials and carefully weather and age them to a state of complete authenticity.

But at the end,... what makes all this so special? Look at the picture of the artwork below:

Can you see the black tape line drawn on the Tate gallery's floor, behind the artist? It appears that this line defines exactly the actual zone of exclusion drawn in May 23 2006 following the passing by parliament of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act that forbade unauthorised demonstrations within a kilometre of Parliament Square!

The artwork stands exactly on this line... How clever... Therefore, it becomes 'outlaw' but culturally approved by the government and therefore untouchable, which brings back to life the Brian Haw tools for protestation. Moreover, it attracts the attention of the media and demonstrates how art and language can be powerful!

Deliciously provoking! Please give an award to this guy!

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