SubscribeAlfredo Jaar
March 2nd, 2008 by Amber Frid-JimenezWe were fortunate to have Alfredo Jaar present the first lecture in the Zones of Emergency series. Alfredo’s talk provided a framework to consider the complexity of working across disciplines - art, education, and the public sphere - to address specific emergency situations. I have asked the students in my courses to contribute their thoughts to this blog as a means to begin an online discussion about many of these issues. Here’s what MIT Media Lab graduate student Adam Kumpf had to say about Alfredo Jaar’s talk last Monday night:
Alfredo talked about his political contemporary artwork, but from a very different point of view than is typical of such artists. Instead of forcefully dictating what he wanted his audience to feel, the pieces were all more reflective and subtle; inviting the audience to come to their own realizations and conclusions. For example, one of Alfredo’s most provocative pieces was a large collection of black archival photo boxes with text on the front describing a photo inside that was taken during the violence in Rwanda. From clarinets in wartime to enormous balloons that crossed country lines, Alfredo took on the often-overlooked details of communities in crisis. Another exhibit displayed a stack of one million passports that had never been issued as a way of opening a dialog about restrictive immigration policies. Using the audience’s imagination to trigger seeing the situation more vividly than with the eye alone was common throughout his work; grounded, influential, inviting, and reflective - political art revealed poetically.
Thanks, Adam!
March 4th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Besides being a very strong artist, Alfredo Jaar came across as a very strong presenter and person in general, and I assume all three are intimitely intertwined. His works are the result of intense and long research cycles and his processes of working, as explained during the talk, very much involve the ‘other’. Jaar attempts to make the unrepresentable representable, knowing that every attempt is an exercise set to fail, as he humbly states it. I was touched by the character, sublety and effectiveness of his work, which to me succeeds and thrives in its dignity and respect vis-a-vis the unrepresentable.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
The works presented by Alfredo Jaar tackles political and social issues by using art as a spectacle, in which the viewers/participants play an essential role. Many of his works, including the burning of the paper arts center, Finnish one million passport project and the red cupola (homeless shelter) projects successfully stir socio-political questions, debates, and dialogue by engaging the viewers into the spectacle. Furthermore, a major strength of his projects is the fact that the remnants of his temporal spectacles have as strong a message as the spectacle in itself. In the burning of the paper arts center project, the site left behind with debris of ashes and burnt structure makes the residents question the important of art and civic places in their life.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:35 am
In defining his practice, Alfredo Jaar outlines three major operative modes in his artistic process: the first is his gallery work or “white cube projects,” the second he described as his educational collaborations in the academic context and the third was his public interventions or “unsolicited works.” His methods of representation in the projects he presented, namely the Rwanda series, showed the criticality with which politics, media, art and social justice collide in his process. This was a recurring element in the body of work Jaar presented. His artistic practice, even as early as as his projects during the Pinochet administration, show a propensity for the tenacious ‘political’ critic. This is what reflects his experiences in the three operative creative modes he described at the beginning of the lecture, making his work interesting to critique not just as museum-destined projects but as social commentaries on emerging zones of emergency needing exposure from a critical perspective.