Jonatan Habib Engqvist Site Talk Transcript
Actively Forgetting - Untimely Meditations on Another Misspent Portrait
This is the transcript of Jonatan Habib Engqvist oral off-site presentation for Christian Capurro's 'Another Misspent Portrait of Etienne de Silhouette' at the 52nd Venice Biennale of Art, 2007. The talk, delivered (with Italian translator, Susanna Fenzo) on 17.06.07 in Treviso, was held in the Cloisters of the Seminary of San Nicolo, in close proximity to the Sala del Capitolo dei Domenicani. The reading-with-translation structure (...) has been kept for this publication.
...I hope that this presentation won't be too long, but there is a lot to be said in relation to the theme of my talk and to Christian's work which, judging by the amount of paper in front of me, has proved very inspiring.
...I will start by stating the obvious. That is, what is obvious for me in relation to Christian's piece. In other words I will take a minute to introduce Christian's general project as I have understood it.
...First of all this is a conceptual work of art. But before I say any more about its concept, or rather - before I forget, I should say something very important when it comes to this presentation. This presentation is about forgetting and it is about the concept of a work of art. Not just because it is a conceptual work of art, but also because, as I had not seen it, it was per definition a concept: which implies that this presentation is a presentation about the idea of an idea of a work art.
...What I mean is that I have seen it now that I am speaking in Treviso, but I had not seen it when I was writing down these notes. If I had seen it before I started thinking about it I might have been talking about it, or talking about the idea of it based on what I had seen. But this presentation is about my idea of the idea of this piece. My idea of the idea of this piece is that, apart from being conceptual, it is a performative piece.
...The physical trace of this performance is a glossy magazine, or rather used to be a glossy magazine. Through the voluntary labour of some 250 people who have erased the print - the trace of the first stage of the performance is a lot of white pages. The labourers have also left traces, not only in the form of the negative traces of white paper. They have also pencilled the amount of time spent, as well as a conceptual approximation of how much time they spent making the white pages white, along with a estimation as to how much money they would have earned if they had been doing what they normally do. That is, how much money they would earn if they had been earning money instead of misspending their time participating in Christian's conceptual and performative work of art.
...When I told Christian what I was planing to talk about in relation to my idea of his idea, he suggested that the talk should be held on this particular site. My relationship to this site is similar to my relationship to his work, so my reflections on this site will also mostly be reflections on my idea of this site. Again, they might have been different if I had seen the site before I started thinking about it.
...I will start by looking at this space and present some of my ideas about it. It is indeed the authentic space that I am standing in and the idea of its authenticity is simply that it is not another space, real or virtual. The monks on the fresco are authentic traces of images of monks in separate quarters, busy doing what monks do. Actually it looks like they are doing something similar to what I normally do (working hard and not earning money), except they are standing by pulpits - this one here St. Augustine, I believe - copy/pasting manually - which I would normally do in front of a computer.
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Tomaso da Modena fresco detail
Sala del Capitolo dei Domenicani,
Chiesa San Nicolo
They are, through these assemblages, busy not only recording but in fact making memories, many of which have faded, just as the fresco itself is fading, along with the technique which once produced it. The fact that it is fading is, from the janitors' or conservator's perspective, not a very good thing. But this is indeed a fact of time.
...On the other hand, this fact of time that we call erosion has an intimate relationship to the question of authenticity. For the unique and singular image is in a way unique and singular because it can potentially disappear. It somehow attains its authentic value through the very fact that it could lose its singular existence. And it is the very fact that it cannot be preserved that gives the preserver something to preserve!
...This idea of value through erosion can perhaps be traced in the un-doing of Capurro's project as well. When confronted with his juxtaposition of the economy of the art world and the economy of the "real world" in terms of how labour is evaluated for example, one realizes how alive the idea of authenticity still is, not least in the art-world. Not only as the "living dead" defenders of early modernity we come across every now and then, but also within the very structure of contemporary art.
...This idea of authenticity can expresses itself as a fear of repetition for example. The authentic product - be it a process or an idea, is perhaps described as an innovating capacity, as newness, or even with the more trendy - "contemporaneity". The unique artifact is in other words seen as unique in relation to all the other stuff that it is not - in relation to the collected magnitude of all the other products on the market: other products that will also be subject to erosion; such as fading images, techniques, concepts and ideas in a ever-changing world.
...Yet it seems to me that it is quite common that we see this fact of time, of erosion or of history, one might even say, - as a malfunction in our recording and archiving of things past. I do believe that it is important to know about our past. Indeed, I would be a fool to argue otherwise. But the false facts of history are not merely the price we have to pay for not having enough information or memory-space available (in the present).
...Forgetting is indeed a part of memory and it is also a necessary part. In ancient Greek the word for forgetting is Lethe. In Greek mythology Lethe is the daughter of Eris, Goddess of strife and discord. Lethe connotes sleep and shadows and is often juxtaposed to the goddess of memory and light - Mnemnosyne. But more commonly when we are speaking of the ancient Greeks we think of the river Lethe - the river that flows through the valley of death. When men drink from its waters their past life falls into oblivion.
...The water cleanses their soul by helping the dead make room for a new, future life. Life that needs light in order to prosper and life that also needs shadow and darkness so that it will not shrivel and dry up. It makes room for all of the questions that will determine the memories of that new life. For the Greeks forgetting was, in other words, seen as a condition for the possibility of new memory. Not only in terms of quantity but also, and perhaps more importantly, on the level of intensity. As a philosopher, I am obliged to take them seriously. And as a theoretician, I find that cooling down with a quick dip in that river every now and then sounds like a healthy thing to do.
...Spontaneously however, the phenomenon of forgetting is often assumed to be a passive process. On any account it is definitely not seen as a very good thing to forget. Forgetting is in other words normally seen as a lack or as a flaw, or indeed - as error.
...With the concept of "active forgetting", I would like to suggest that forgetting can become the possibility of movement and change against a fixed, archived, legitimate or predetermined (and in Christian's case - a printed) memory.
...From this horizon forgetting might be understood as form of imagination. Not only as the opening of a space for imagination, but as the very capacity to maintain or perhaps even to construct, and in fact de-construct a "deeper" memory. It is a memory that allows the more distant past or a fundamental structure to be un-forgotten.
...Let me use a modest example. Through Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades we were indeed taught to forget the earlier function of objects initially produced for other purposes than art.
...Through this gesture of directness, Duchamp presented art and the art object as an event. Perhaps not as an unhistorical event, but after Duchamp art definitely becomes an event, even if it also can be an object. And it is unhistorical in so much as it is an event that presents and re-presents objects disconnected from their earlier history. Through their disconnectedness however the objects can refer more explicitly to their original context by being separated from it. To phrase it bluntly - the reference to historical context is achieved in the ready-made through a certain kind of forgetting of historical context.
...Getting bolder, I might suggest that if Christian's work is also viewed from this perspective, we find that we are confronted with traces of a process, but not only as a process of reconfiguration. The traces of the stripping of content from the original traces present a finished process and simultaneously "retrieve" another object. This new object might even tell us something about its previous state on the basis of its own transformation. Through the erasure of the object's original meaning, new meaning might appear.
...In Nietzsche's Second Untimely Meditation "on the use and misuse of history" which I will talk about today, the animal in the form of a cow - or more specifically the happy cow, la vache qui rit - unhistorical and contently grazing in the meadow is given to us as an image of blissful and ignorant forgetfulness.
...Modern mans' excess of memory, contextual and/or historical knowledge is described as something that stifles the air, leads to stagnation and even as something that can cause bitterness (resentiment).
...A historical sense is necessary and indeed inevitable, but in order to act and to enjoy there must be a moment of forgetting Nietzsche claims. Therefore, the memory of a culture, or the cult of memory must also be prescribed in appropriate doses. For Dr. Nietzsche, it is however not a question of there being an appropriate dosage for certain individuals and cultures. The question of how much memory a certain society can handle is, rather, decided by the character of a certain historical plastic force, which is in turn decided by life.
...In other words it is, as we saw earlier with the Greeks - a question of intensity rather than one of quantity. Basically, the argument is that in order to be healthy, history must serve life. But before we get there, let us look at Nietzsche's short but important text.
...The Second Untimely Meditation is perhaps most famous for its diagnoses of five different ways of dealing with history, all of which can serve life but all of which also can reach unhealthy and even dangerous proportions. To roughly sketch out the five categories, you might recall: the monumental historians perspective (bluntly one could speak of classicist, national-romantic or conservative strategies with grand narratives and dead men as we learn it in school); the antiquarian historian (family albums, museums and a lot of the archives one can find on the internet might be examples of this attitude) and the critical historian (guided by marxist theory, feminist perspectives, post colonial theories, you name it). He also speaks of the overhistorical and the suprahistorical perspective - which are, as I hope to show, both the disease and the cure.
...I would love to give a short technical discussion of the first three and how they relate to the latter two with Venice as my example, but I do not want to bore you too much so early into my talk, or fall into the trap of over-contextualization. The important thing is that these categories are not solely about different ways of approaching historical-science or art history for that matter. Apart from pre-dating the so-called post-modern insight that we are always entangled in, in a historical situation, they also hold a phenomenological depiction of different ways that history presents itself to us, and does so on a very existential level.
...In and through this text Nietzsche shows us that the only way to deal with the cult of memory is through vaccine. The over-historical virus - that all-seeing eye that almost becomes blinded because it cannot act - can only be treated by means of a supra-historical antidote i.e. through selecting which traces and trajectories are relevant in a specific context. In a typical Nietzschian twist, the claim is that the historical disease only can be cured through a confrontation with its own history - and knowledge must finally face itself.
...Nietzsche's reflection on the use and abuse of history and the past can thus be said to be a historical attitude striving to open up toward futures of the possible. Perhaps the prescription can be regarded as synonymous or at least related to the psychological term "selective retrieval" (which is used in trauma therapy) - the need to learn how to forget in order live in the present. Or to phrase it more provocatively: learning how to forget the recent past or situation in order to discover or rediscover a more distant past. This might help us to see the present situation from a broader perspective. Which, in turn, points toward possible futures.
...Again one might stress that this is not propagating historical ignorance as in the case of the post-Franco generation in Spain or the denial of colonialism in the country of La Vache Qui Rit. It is not about creamy, tasteless cheese at all. To use a common Nietzschian metaphor, our relationship to history is more a question of optics. Just as one with a camera lens has to choose between micro and macro in order to obtain a sharp image.
...Michel Foucault once suggested a concept of "effective history"1 as opposed to "traditional history". The main difference between the two being that effective history lacks constants. Even if Foucault does insist on the value of "gray" empirical facts, he has also inherited Nietzsche's (Zarathustra's) skeptical attitude toward the "great events" painted by the monumental historian. This basically means that historical sense in the service of life attempts to organize and generalize experienced knowledge - i.e. historical facts. Historical facts can in turn be used as effective tools that help us differentiate between, and conceptualize, "periphery" historical phenomena.
...In turn, the value of historical events can be questioned from the standpoint of effective history. In other words, the value of historical facts should be measured from the perspective of life itself. And from the perspective of life, historical knowledge is not primarily about discovering the past. That does not imply that it is about a suppressing of things that have happened. Rather it means that life is now. Now includes traces of then and of history. Seeing history from the perspective of life is therefore a description of how far we are from ourselves.
...In our society of the collected rather than the collective Mnemnosyne, mediated memories have become a powerful force. In many ways its chatter has become so deafening that it is hard for us to hear our own voices. The mediated memory, however critical in its intent, has perhaps come to take the role that Foucault labeled "traditional" history. This mediated history that uses the critical historians "small stories" (be it advanced theory or Vogue Homme) might even do the opposite of what it originally set out to do when distinctions between "general" and "personal" memories become blurred. Without the space for action we can, at best simply react or administrate our impressions.
...In order to do this theme justice however, the Second Untimely Meditation should be brought into context - into a contemporary, yet perhaps, untimely context.
...In ยง 76 of Being and Time, Martin Heidegger mentions the Second Untimely Meditation claiming that Nietzsche new more than he revealed. Heidegger doesn't explicitly tell us what Nietzsche knew, or forgot to tell us, but does not reveal in his text. Perhaps Heidegger's comment just reveals the importance of what Nietzsche says and does not say for his own thinking, but on any account Heidegger either chooses not to or, perhaps he too forgets, to reveal what it is that Nietzsche is not saying.
...However, when Heidegger later lectures on this treatise (in 1938/39) he does drop a clue as to what this unrevealed might be by focusing on the question of animality and by criticizing Nietzsche's treatise of failing to question its own understanding of life. This is indeed a strong claim. Especially if we consider that "life" is that by which the value of history should be measured, according to Nietzsche.
...So let us return to our happy cow with Heidegger's brutal comment in mind. It is a fact that philosophical references to animality are never innocent. This especially applies when we are dealing with the question of history (Heidegger should know). Therefore one should perhaps attempt to confront Nietzsche with his own means.
...From the horizon of animality, the happy cow in the meadow is what man is not. The cow is basically the unhistorical animal. We can hopefully be happy, but we are on the other hand those who see our own possibilities and limitations. We see our "have-beens" and arguably it is often precisely through them that we see our own possibilities as well as our limitations.
...When the cow is depicted for us, Nietzsche speaks about freedom but also about and in relation to memory. In fact the essence of the two can in the end be similar. Being human (all too human) implies that the past can always come back and haunt us, judge us, tell us who we are and where we stand.
...The "blissful ignorance" or unawareness of the animal is not available to us because we are historical beings. Being is for us historical. Hans Ruin writes that Nietzsche's "argument is that through an excess of memory, and the scientific ideal of an unlimited gathering of knowledge of the past [however critical], an age can be so burdened by its own knowledge that it loses its creative potential. In this sense an exaggerated historical preoccupation can become a danger to life itself, which thereby loses its natural instincts and ability to act in the present... life also needs forgetfulness in order to prosper and create."2
...To paraphrase Nietzsche's vocabulary once more: Stress through too many stimuli, as in this case of overexposure to historical knowledge or over-information, can lead to insomnia and indigestion. Frankly, it might even cause constipation and will definitely spoil your appetite. It leads to insomnia due to being awake too much, and to indigestion due to insomnia and the incapacity to incorporate and assimilate the unfamiliar into our own being - into history and into life.
...But bearing in mind Heidegger's remark to all the philosophers of life one might ask: If we say that too much memory harms life, is not that which harms life also a form of "life"?
...History is a kind of memory. Nietzsche has shown us that it is not only a collective memory, but indeed a collected memory. In other words it is a form of creative interpretation of various traces of separate events in the past, as we understand them in the present. We write history and take decisions about things like cultural heritage in order to distinguish the importance of our own group or nation. Some times it used to discredit others - others who belong to other, different groups or nations. As if to illustrate this from the critical historian's point of view the comedian Eddie Izzard exclaims, "I grew up in Europe... where history comes from" (Dressed to Kill).
...Given that history is the winner's story, we can still chose how to use the traces of the past so that it is relevant for us in our contemporary situation. If we take an active role - it is not simply these traces that determine us, or the time in which we live. If for a moment we allow ourselves to be untimely, our "authentic", ur-sprung in the past is, in a certain manner, negotiable. Perhaps all we need is an eraser!
...But this flexibility is without doubt double natured. On the one hand we have this affirmative and creative interpretation proposed by Dr. Nietzsche (illustrated in his autobiography Ecce Homo) and on the other hand the problems of denial, exclusion and an excuse to neglect wrongs past (also illustrated in Ecce Homo!).
...As you can see this is not a simple thing. Perhaps one could speak of different kinds of forgetting, just as we can speak of different kinds of memory, in order to see what's going on.
...There are many analyses of different kinds of memory. Many of which could be understood within the active/passive framework of thought that I am trying to explore here. For example the man on the fresco with the scissors - St Augustine - once related a certain kind of memory to action.
...The computer terms ROM and RAM (Read Only Memory and Random Access Memory) is another metaphor one might use to describe active and passive memory. And the German theorist Fredrich Kittler uses precisely this, the RAM/ROM-metaphor, in order to describe the metamorphoses of memory in relation to the transition of monks' reading out loud (ROM) to silent reading (RAM): from storing to finding the right information.
...When it comes to forgetting, one might for instance try to turn RAM and ROM upside-down. I tried. But quite soon I found that this model ran into problems since the activity of forgetting works within the field of negativity and is difficult to grapple with on this more operative level.
...However, psychoanalysis does provide us with one such distinction, through the concepts of "pacified" and "unpacified" forgetting. These are terms that connote the retrieval in the present, before and after treatment. For Freud, as always, it is connected to pleasure or displeasure. Displeasure or potential displeasure basically makes us forget uncomfortable events, or parts of events. Or perhaps for Freud, forgetting can help us avoid potentially uncomfortable situations.
...Another distinction between kinds of forgetting, perhaps even between productive and reactive forgetting, might be a distinction between forgetting that merely results in loss and a forgetting with more positive effects. The latter would be a kind of ongoing process of forgetting where our body can separate trivial memories from memories that serve life.
...In this vein of thought I might mention Paul Ricouer who attempts to make a distinction between oblivious forgetting and a rather obscure concept of "reserve memory". This "reserve memory" allows temporary forgottens to be retrieved. In this sense Ricouer suggests that we actually forget less than we think we do or fear that we might.
...I am not sure if I fully grasp Ricouer's idea here, but in this context it might be described a kind of RAM model where memory is seen as information that can be retrieved if the infrastructure or methods for retrieval are in working order. The "reserve memory" is thereby understood as a kind of network-based administration for channelling information.
...In closing, the Greek concept of forgetting - Lethe - is indeed interesting to return to after this rough sketch of Nietzsche's text. Especially when reminded that the Classical Greek word for truth - A-lethia literally is its negation. Truth is "un-forgetting". Heidegger talks a lot about truth as A-lethia, as un-concealment. And when Heidegger says, "Nietzsche is not telling us something" this could be seen precisely as a form of A-lethia. If there is an enigmatic something that Nietzsche is not telling us, it might be because it simply cannot be told. For how does one indeed un-tell?
...So what am I insinuating here in relation to the work that I am here to talk about? Am I proposing that there is some enigmatic truth in Christian's piece? Something that must be articulated before it can be seen, or unseen? Does it, according to me, un-tell us something?
...The "active forgetting" or forgetting action in this misspent portrait can obviously be read into the act of erasing previous images, but it is also this action that makes another action possible; an act that makes statements about disproportionate economic structures through the traces of a pencil. Through the removal of previous images this piece can reveal formal and informal structures within a certain historical situation, perhaps within the economy of the art-world, from inside the art-world. Through pencilled numbers the "misspending" portrait becomes an economical portrait. With its white pages working as a kind of blinding mirrors, the expenditure of this piece can perhaps itself become a reflection on the use and misuse of the gift-economy inherent to the art-world, so to speak.
...Having said this, one should always take care not to see art as a "platform" or as a means of communication since that would be a form of denial or even reactive forgetting. Indeed as Christian's modest title, Another Misspent Portrait... suggests: Christian's work is not just a misspent portrait, it is indeed another - one among many - misspent portraits. Yet he chooses not only to present it, he chooses to present it here - in Venice - the coolest place for the newest art. Are you supposed to show a "one among many" piece here? Honestly - Of all places! When you get your fifteen minutes of biennale - are you going to misspend it?
...Well, I am glad he did. Of course, I am glad because I would not be here to talk about my idea of his idea of it in this way, if he did not choose to do this the way he did. But there is another level to this as well. There might in fact be something being un-told here. I am not even going to attempt to interpret what it might be.
...My point is that there is a moment in every creative act where one has to misspend - where one must actively forget that one knows that this is one among many. And perhaps Christian's Misspent Portrait reminds us not to forget that when you remember to forget this - the piece will open itself for us in its singularity - or more provocatively - its authenticity.
...Again, this is not the same as suggesting that we skip the context or read simply this as l'art pour art or art for its own sake. Rather, I am suggesting a delicate balancing act between recognition and moving on. To my knowledge no-one has ever managed to organise that kind of meticulous rubbing session in the history of art before. Perhaps Christian has even coined the un-ready-made!
...To sum up, my interpretation of Nietzsche's Second Untimely Meditation in this context is mostly on an existential level. The simple thesis of this talk is that every creative act requires a moment of active forgetting to come into being, and here in the context of the biennale - a moment of blindness in order to be seen.
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Seminary Cloister, San Nicolo
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Let me finally end this talk by returning shortly to our monks. An important skill for them is that of gardening. Misspending hours on end in the gardens of the monastery. Gardens that might overlook that happy cow's meadow for all I know. They too are erasing - pruning and selecting herbs and plants. Perhaps one might see their space as a metaphor for the relationship between remembering and forgetting that I have tried to capture and associate to Christian's work here today. I would therefore like to end with a short quote from Marc Ague's book Oblivion as to illustrate my idea of Christian's idea of his work.
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Auge suggests that "[r]emembering or forgetting is doing gardener's work, selecting, pruning... Memories are like plants: there are those that need to be [erased] in order to help the others burgeon, transform, flower."
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Thank you all for misspending time listening to my talk, thank you Christian for pulling up the misspent weeds of Vogue Homme and planting the misspent seeds of pencilled numbers. Now that I have seen them, I look forward to seeing what will burgeon, transform and flower.
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And thank you Susanna (Fenzo) for your translation.
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Jonatan Habib Engqvist
Footnotes:
1Foucault, Michel Nietzsche, Genealogy, History
2Ruin, Hans Blinding Wisdom - Nietzsche's Superhistorical Gaze in The Past's Presence - Essays on the Historicity of Philosophical Thought, Eds. Marcia Sa Cavalcante Schuback and Hans Ruin, Sodertorn Academic Studies 3, Sodertorn University College, 2006.