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https://kylejthompson.tumblr.com/

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This is Dame Barbara Hepworth’s studio in St Ives, Cornwall

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This is Dame Barbara Hepworth’s studio in St Ives, Cornwall

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Until You Find Another Yellow Schwalbe is a set of forty colour photographs, thirty-nine of which show two bright yellow motorcycles of identical design standing adjacent to each other in various different street scenes, and one of which features three such motorcycles parked by a wall. The pictures have a fixed sequence and although they have been exhibited in various arrangements, they were originally designed for display in a single, horizontal row, with the photograph that features three motorcycles appearing at the end of the sequence. The scenes in the pictures are quite closely cropped, with the motorcycles always standing roughly in the centre with a limited amount of their urban environment visible around them. They are presented broadly in profile and facing to the right in all pictures except the first three, in which they are shown from the front. With the exception of one photograph in which the blurred form of a cyclist is seen riding past, none of the photographs feature people. Aside from the brightly coloured motorcycles, the pictures are dominated by greys, browns and other muted tones.

This work was made by the Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco in 1995 in Berlin, while Orozco was living and working there by means of a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Shortly after moving to Berlin earlier that year, Orozco had bought a bright yellow motorcycle produced by the German manufacturer Schwalbe. To make the works in this series, Orozco rode around the city on his motorcycle over a period of approximately three months, stopping whenever he saw another yellow Schwalbe, and then parking his own adjacent to it and photographing both vehicles together. On each occasion he left a note inviting the motorcycle's owner to attend a gathering outside Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie, which was to be held on the sixth anniversary of the reunification of Germany. Two of the Schwalbe owners joined him at this event and their vehicles are shown with Orozco's in the final image in the group. All of the pictures in the series are chromogenic prints, and when making them the artist inverted some of the scenes so that any motorcycles that originally faced left pointed to the right. Another edition of this group of photographs exists and is owned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The title Until You Find Another Yellow Schwalbe highlights the systematic approach that Orozco took in making the work, which is one of many by Orozco that involve subtle actions undertaken in public that are documented through photographs or objects (see, for instance, Crazy Tourist 1991). However, on several occasions, including during an interview in 2006, Orozco has expressed concern regarding the way that these 'secondary' documents act as 'leftovers', distancing the viewer from the original action (Orozco in Bois 2009, p.160). This concern may explain the emphasis in the title of this work on Orozco's act of riding around Berlin rather than its photographic documentation. In 2003 he stated that it also accounts for aspects of the work's presentation:

In arranging the photos in a linear, rhythmic pattern, I wanted the spectators to feel like they were watching a linear sequence of two parallel motorcycles moving together ... I wanted to reproduce, somehow, the motorcycle's movement through the city.
(Quoted in Miguel González Virgen, Of Games, The Infinite and Worlds: The Work of Gabriel Orozco, Dublin 2003, p.6.)

In 1996 the art historian Benjamin Buchloh noted that the motorcycle Orozco chose had been produced in the dissolved German Democratic Republic (or East Germany, which was closely linked to the USSR), suggesting that this work is therefore 'a reflection on the wasted opportunities of a socialist countermodel ... that had been once at hand' (Buchloh in Bois 2009, p.45). Orozco also made reference to German reunification by arranging to meet the other Schwalbe owners at the gathering for its sixth anniversary and, as Buchloh argues, he may have intended to reflect on the relationship between the newly conjoined German nations through the recurring image of two adjacent motorcycles (Buchloh in Bois 2009, p.45). Orozco stated in 2001 that 'My works have a country of origin, and it is important to understand the reason for each object I use in terms of geography and history as well as for its function as a social material' (Gabriel Orozco, 'A Lecture', in Bois 2009, p.96).

Further reading
Gabriel Orozco, exhibition catalogue, Museum of Modern Art, New York 2009, pp.17, 36, 106, reproduced p.107.
Yves-Alain Bois, Gabriel Orozco, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2009, pp.44-5, 160-1, reproduced pp.46-7.
Jessica Morgan, Gabriel Orozco, London 2011, pp.72-3, reproduced pp.74-5.

David Hodge
January 2015

Supported by Christie's.
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‘until you find another yellow schwalbe’

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'Until You Find Another Yellow Schwalbe', Gabriel Orozco, 1995 | Tate

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Until You Find Another Yellow Schwalbe is a set of forty colour photographs, thirty-nine of which show two bright yellow motorcycles of identical design standing adjacent to each other in various different street scenes, and one of which features three such motorcycles parked by a wall.

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Steve McQueen - Works | Thomas Dane Gallery

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Oleg Kulik
(1961, URSS)

Mad Dog

Now recognised as one of the major Russian artists of his generation, Oleg Kulik puts the question of animality at the centre of his work. Considering that Western Europe, which regards itself as progressive and liberal, is opposed to Eastern Europe, seen as bad and repressive, he uses the figure of the dog to incarnate the face of an anti-human type of politics. This metaphor of the difficult situation of the artist shackled within post-Soviet society also echoes the Russian literary tradition which, from Gogol to Boulgakov, uses animals as a means to know man better. This collection of photographs depicts one of his seminal performances. Performed in Moscow in 1994 around the Marat gallery, it puts the artist centre-stage, naked and tethered by a dog's lead, metamorphosed into an aggressive dog, lashing out at the audience crowding around.

Domain
Photo

Techniques

Epreuve gélatino-argentique

Dimensions

120 x 160 cm

Acquisition

Don de la Société des Amis du Musée national d'art moderne, 2011, Projet pour l'art contemporain 2010

Inventory no.

AM 2011-114

Credits

Photo credits : © Georges Meguerditchian - Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI /Dist. RMN-GP

Image reference : 4N51913

Image presentation : l'Agence Photo de la RMN

Artist

Oleg Kulik
(1961, URSS)

Main title

Mad Dog

Domain
Photo

Inventory no.

AM 2011-114

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Skip to main content Oleg Kulik (1961, URSS) Mad Dog Now recognised as one of the major Russian artists of his generation, Oleg Kulik puts the question of animality at the centre of his work.

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Augusto Boal, the visionary Brazilian theatre director and dramatist, who has died aged 78, spent his life proving that you didn't have to wait until "after the revolution" for worthwhile social improvements - you could use theatre to make radical changes in the here and now. Best known as the author of the 1974 classic Theatre of the Oppressed, which had grown out of his theatre movement of the same name, Boal was an inspirational and internationally recognised theatre guru.

Boal was born and grew up in Rio de Janeiro and trained as an industrial chemist, first graduating in 1952 and then researching at New York's Columbia University. Fascinated by theatre, he spent his time in the United States studying drama as well as chemical engineering. In 1955, he wrote and directed his first play - The House Across the Street - in New York.

When Boal returned to Brazil, he was invited to work at the tiny Arena theatre in São Paulo, and was its director between 1956 and 1971. At first, he ran writers' and actors' workshops, then - influenced by the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s - he took agitprop shows into the countryside and pioneered a radical kind of "living newspaper" in which the audience helped decide the subject of the play.

At one point, when Boal's agitprop group was preaching the necessity of taking up arms, a peasant in the audience stood up and suggested an armed raid on a local landlord. Embarrassed, the actors backed down. But the incident taught them to listen to the people.

Abandoning crude agitprop, Boal developed the idea of the "Theatre of the Oppressed". At first, this involved asking audience members for ideas for alternative endings to plays about oppression. Then, after an angry woman was so dissatisfied with how his actors interpreted her suggestions that she came on stage and showed them what she meant, he developed shows with more audience participation.

Drama entered his life in a more dangerous way when, in 1971, Boal's activities came to the notice of Brazil's military junta. He was arrested and tortured, then released after three months. Exiled to Argentina, he continued to practise his ideas, developing for example a new form of theatre, image theatre - which uses physical theatre instead of the spoken word - during a literacy campaign in Peru in 1973.

In 1974, he published his first book, Theatre of the Oppressed, which argued that mainstream theatre was an instrument of ruling-class control, aimed at sedating the audience, but which also showed how the dramatic arts could be a weapon, turning the spectator into an actor, the oppressed into revolutionaries. The British playwright John Arden once said it was a book that "should be read by everyone in the world of theatre who has any pretensions at all to political commitment".

Based on the radical teaching of Paulo Freire, whose book Pedagogy of the Oppressed was a direct influence, Boal's ideas aimed to wake up the passive spectator, inviting members of the audience on to the stage to act out their real-life problems, turning them into what he called "spect-actors", and empowering them to find strategies for personal and social change.

He also developed other kinds of participatory drama, including forum theatre, which aims to generate solutions to real-life problems. Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed was translated into 25 languages and his techniques were adapted in places as diverse as Estonia, India, Puerto Rico and Sweden. There has been a torrent of scholarly articles and books about him in French, Spanish and Portuguese, although he is less known in the English-speaking world.

In 1976, he settled in Lisbon before being appointed professor at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1978. There he taught his radical approach to theatre, setting up a Theatre of the Oppressed centre, and organising international Theatre of the Oppressed festivals from 1981 to 1985. In Europe, Boal became more aware of the subjective aspects of oppression, so in Paris he started workshops - with his psychoanalyst wife Cecilia - designed to tackle what he called "the cop in the head".

After the downfall of the military junta, Boal returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1986. He set up a major Theatre of the Oppressed centre and formed more than a dozen companies to develop community-based performances. He also experimented with other kinds of intervention, such as invisible theatre, where actors set up a situation in a public place to stimulate debate among onlookers, or culture theatre, which involves members of one ethnic group performing a play from a culture antagonistic to their own - for example, Palestinians putting on a Jewish play.

In 1993-96, Boal was elected as a member of Rio de Janeiro's city council, and turned techniques first devised to encourage audience participation into a way of making popular laws, calling this technique legislative theatre.

"Unlike the dogmatic political theatre of the 1960s, which told people what to do," Boal said, when I met him in 1995, "we now ask them what they want." What excited him, he said, was the unexpected creativity of the process. "Many times we came up with a simple idea no one had thought of before."

More books followed, including Games for Actors and Non-Actors (1989), The Rainbow of Desire (1995) and Legislative Theatre (1998). In 2001, his autobiography, Hamlet and the Baker's Son, was published. In 1994 he was awarded Unesco's Pablo Picasso medal, and he had countless honorary doctorates, including from London University, Worcester College, Oxford, and the University of Nebraska.

He was slight of build, modest, but always full of energy and quiet hope; Boal's terrific energy came from his faith in the creativity, spontaneity and ability of all people, however underprivileged, to change their situation. In London, for example, he often worked with Cardboard Citizens, a homeless people's theatre company, and he continued until recently working on projects both in the developing world and in the US, which he visited every year.

Boal was married twice. He is survived by his wife and collaborator, Cecilia, and two children, Fabian and Julian.

Augusto Boal, writer, director and teacher, born 16 March 1931; died 2 May 2009

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Augusto Boal, the visionary Brazilian theatre director and dramatist, who has died aged 78, spent his life proving that you didn't have to wait until "after the revolution" for worthwhile social improvements - you could use theatre to make radical changes in the here and now.

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High Wire is a room-sized video installation consisting of four projections and two lightboxes. Filmed at Red Road, a high-rise housing complex in Glasgow, it shows the noted French tightrope walker Didier Pasquette attempting to cross from one tower to another over a thin metal wire at a height of 90 metres. The large projections occupy the four walls of the space in which the work is exhibited, offering different views of the event. One shows a long view of the two tower blocks against the distant landscape, highlighting the dominance of the high-rise in its urban context. The second projects footage filmed from the top of one tower, the camera shifting shakily between the roof itself and the line of wire. The third and fourth projections offer further views of the rooftop, one from a distance and one close up. As the films begin Pasquette enters the frame, stepping off a small platform down to the level of the wire. A camera is strapped onto his helmet, revealing the source of the eagle-eye view of the scene, and captures a sweeping, panoramic view to the left, then to the right. It then catches glimpses of Pasquette unclasping his hands and feet, and calmly and purposefully lifting the long pole prepared for him to aid his balance. As he sets off into the void, Pasquette looks down, and his head-camera view provides a reeling, vertiginous sensation. He moves with precision and grace, carefully touching the wire with his toes before resting each foot on it. One third of the way along the wire, Pasquette stops and appears to be in trouble, with the rope shaking beneath him. Retaining his focus, he steps backwards, fast and composed, and in a few seconds he reaches the roof again, his crossing frustrated.

High Wire was made by the British artist Catherine Yass in 2008. It continues a preoccupation, seen in Yass's earlier work, with architecture and urban systems, in particular the ways in which they can convey wider social and political concerns (see, for instance, her 1994 series Corridors, Tate -, and Descent 2002, Tate ). The choice of Red Road was originally a practical one, but it came to symbolise the aspirations of an apparently misconceived architectural utopia. Built in 1964-9 as part of Glasgow City Council's slum clearance project, Red Road was the tallest residential building complex in Europe at the time. Inspired by the utopian ideas of the architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965), this dream of a brighter future was embraced by the local community. Yet a rise in crime and gang violence, bad maintenance, and perhaps a lack of a sense of ownership and engagement due to the scale of the complex, made residents feel vulnerable and insecure. Red Road became emblematic of the ill-fated housing ambitions seen across Britain in this period. In 2005, three years before Yass made High Wire, Glasgow Housing Association announced a £60 million regeneration plan for Red Road, slating the towers for demolition, to be replaced by around 600 low-rise private and council homes.

High Wire found an immediate resonance within this context, which for some exemplified the failure of the modernist utopian project, and in the installation this is paired with the frustrated attempts by Pasquette to realise his own dream. As Yass stated in 2008:

High Wire is a dream of walking in the air, out into nothing. But it has an urban background and the high-rise buildings provide the frame and support. The dream of reaching the sky is also a modernist dream of cities in the air, inspired by a utopian belief in progress. Every time I see Didier turning back I remember hearing him shout, from where I was standing on another rooftop, 'C'est pas possible!' But something was possible, he returned safely. And something emerged from the actuality of the walk, which was a moment when reality became more of a dream than the dream itself.
(Quoted in Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art 2008, p.94.)

Yass's four-screen video installation is accompanied by two photographic works of the same sky walk, printed as black and white negatives and presented on lightboxes. While the videos elicit an empathetic, almost physical response from the viewers, the grey, backlit landscape of the lightboxes presents a world that is unfamiliar and distant.

Further reading
Catherine Yass: High Wire, exhibition catalogue, Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art, London and Glasgow 2008.

Sofia Karamani
October 2011
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colour and black and white and sound (stereo)

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'High Wire', Catherine Yass, 2008 | Tate

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High Wire is a room-sized video installation consisting of four projections and two lightboxes. Filmed at Red Road, a high-rise housing complex in Glasgow, it shows the noted French tightrope walker Didier Pasquette attempting to cross from one tower to another over a thin metal wire at a height of 90 metres.

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Homeless Vehicle is a perverse device resembling an invention of a crazy scientist who wants to solve social problems with the use of new technologies.

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Partially Buried Woodshed is a work of land art created by American artist Robert Smithson in January 1970 at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. The work consisted of an existing woodshed and earth added by the artist in order to illustrate the concept of entropy. By 2018, only a large mound of dirt and the structure's concrete foundation remain. The remaining elements, along with an informational plaque, are located in a small wooded area immediately behind the Liquid Crystal Institute building on the Kent State University main campus, in the southeastern area of Kent.

In January 1970 Robert Smithson visited Kent State University as part of the School of Art Creative Arts Festival. Initially, he had planned to do a mudflow sculpture, but cold temperatures prevented him from being able to dig the dirt needed for the project. Instead, he created Partially Buried Woodshed using an old woodshed from a former farm on the eastern edge of campus that had recently been acquired by the school. Smithson rented a backhoe and transported 20 truck loads of dirt onto the right side of the woodshed until the center beam cracked, marking the beginning of the structure's decline. He valued the work at $10,000 and donated it to the university, asking that no changes be made and that the structure be allowed to deteriorate naturally. Shortly after the May 4, 1970, Kent State shootings, an anonymous person added the inscription 'MAY 4 KENT 70' with white paint to one of the structure's horizontal beams. The addition of the message about May 4, 1970 helped make the Partially Buried Woodshed one of the many memorial sites on campus.

The work was set on fire by an unknown arsonist on March 28, 1975, burning much of the left side and causing the structure's major collapse. The University Arts Commission recommended in April that the roof and burned portion be removed-mostly citing safety concerns-with the remaining walls, earthen mound, and rafters allowed to continue the natural aging process. By late April, the university had much of the damaged section removed and planned to landscape the area around the sculpture as a park. Smithson's widow, Nancy Holt, visited the work on May 3, 1975, and called for its preservation. A committee recommended in June 1975 that the entire sculpture be removed, citing liability concerns, though university president Glenn Olds ultimately decided to keep the remains of the sculpture in 1976. Sometime in mid-1981, the center beam fully broke, and in January 1984, the remaining wooden elements of the structure were quietly removed by the university. While the School of Art hosted exhibits in 1990 for the 20th anniversary of the work's creation, and again in 2005 for the 35th anniversary, the location of the artwork was largely ignored until Kent State University added an informational plaque to a sidewalk near the site in 2016.

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Partially Buried Woodshed is a work of land art created by American artist Robert Smithson in January 1970 at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. The work consisted of an existing woodshed and earth added by the artist in order to illustrate the concept of entropy.

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Jerusalem, Israel, 2004; 17:41 min
In collaboration with Philippe Bellaiche, Rachel Leah Jones, and Julien Devaux

Sometimes doing something poetic can become political and sometimes doing something political can become poetic

In the summer of 1995 I performed a walk with a leaking can of blue paint in the city of São Paulo. The walk was then read as a poetic gesture of sorts. In June 2004, I re-enacted that same performance with a leaking can of green paint by tracing a line following the portion of the 'Green Line' that runs through the municipality of Jerusalem. 58 liters of green paint were used to trace 24 km. Shortly after, a filmed documentation of the walk was presented to a number of people whom I invited to react spontaneously to the action and the circumstances within which it was performed.

Click on name to see the video and the interview

Public domain videos can be downloaded and shared with others as long as the authorship is credited and there is a link back to the website of the author. These videos cannot be altered in any way or used for commercial purpose nor cannot be displayed or exhibited without the consent of the artist.

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Jerusalem, Israel, 2004; 17:41 min The Green Line Jerusalem, Israel, 2004; 17:41 min In collaboration with Philippe Bellaiche, Rachel Leah Jones, and Julien Devaux Sometimes doing something poetic can become political and sometimes doing something political can become poetic In the summer of 1995 I performed a walk with a leaking can of blue paint...

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Richard Long -A Line in the Himalayas, 1975, printed 2004, Tate London

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Richard Long -A Line in the Himalayas, 1975, printed 2004, Tate London