“Darkness is
important,” says theatre designer Kai Fischer as he clicks through
a series of images on his laptop for Entartet, his performed
installation which arrives at Edinburgh's off-piste Old Ambulance
Depot art-space this week. Entartet is the German word for
degenerate, and Fischer's stand-alone visual and audio work draws its
inspiration from Nazi Germany's notorious Degenerate Art Exhibition
that took place in Munich from July to November 1937.
Arising from Adolf
Hitler's furious stance against what he perceived to be the threat of
abstract and modernist art, Die
Ausstellung Entartete Kunst was
the brain-child of Hitler's right-hand man Joseph Goebbels and
favourite painter Adolf Ziegler. The pair confiscated some 650
artworks from German museums for an event designed to run parallel
with what was considered to be the far purer Great German Art
Exhibition. The Degenerate Art Exhibition featured works by Chagall,
Kandinsky and Klee, as well as pieces by Mondrian, Picasso and a host
of others whose work didn't fit in with a vulgarian ideology of
control.
Rather than attempt a
blow by blow re-enactment of all this, Fischer, in collaboration with
sound designer Matt Padden, has gone for a more impressionistic
approach, involving recordings of the catalogue texts alongside an
actress giving a speech again drawn from already existing material.
Crucially, no paintings are hung, leaving the viewer to imagine what
is being described for themselves. Given Fischer's long-standing
involvement with Vanishing Point, director Matthew Lenton's
Glasgow-based theatre company noted in shows such as Interiors and
Saturday Night for a visually elliptical aesthetic, this is no
surprise.
“It's about populism
and intolerance,” Fischer says of Entartet. “These artworks are
being described as dangerous, derogatory or primitive, but of course
they are also describing people, and describing them very harshly,
and attacking them. What makes the text interesting for me is the
range it covers. It starts off like something you could read on a
blog or a tabloid today, about craftsmanship and so on. Then it takes
it to extremes with really horrific personal attacks. For me, the
important thing is how it vilifies outsiders, and picks on a group
because it doesn't understand them.”
The roots of Entartet
date from Fischer stumbling on the Degenerate Art Exhibition's
original catalogue, containing texts ridiculing the works on show, in
a second-hand bookshop. Fischer originally developed what became
Entartet for a proposed event at Tate Britain to accompany Polish
artist Miroslaw Balka's black box based How It Is installation in
2009. As it turned out, Entartet premiered at the CCA in Glasgow
earlier this year, at a time when Fischer was preparing
While the idea may be
complex, Entartet is, by Fischer's own admission, “ the smallest
thing I've ever done.”
This is something of an
understatement. As a designer and artistic associate with Vanishing
Point company since 1999, Fischer has been responsible for the huge
sets that have graced the company's large-scale shows, including
Interiors, Saturday Night and Vanishing Point's recent contribution
to Edinburgh International Festival, Wonderland. Fischer also
designed Vanishing Point's version of The Beggar's Opera in
collaboration with the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, where he
recently worked on Lenton's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
This week, Fischer's work can be seen in Aberdeen in Graham McLaren's
touring production of Jo Clifford's version of Great Expectations.
While Entartet comes at
the end of a busy year for Fischer, having just installed Interiors
for a Moscow run following A Midsummer night's Dream and Wonderland,
Entartet's free to enter Edinburgh dates aren't the end of the
project. Entartet is already programmed to appear in Aberdeen and
Shetland in 2013, with hopefully more to follow. It is also the sort
of project which can develop as it goes.
“For me it's not
really that much about art,” Fischer says. “It's more about the
intolerance of people, whether they're artists or not, and how they
will use something to fit in with their own political ideology,
whatever damage that might cause.”
Entartet, The Old
Ambulance Depot, Brunswick Street, Edinburgh,
November
7th-8th,
installation 11am-4.30pm/installation and performance 5.30pm-8.30pm;
November 9th-10th,
installation 11am-2pm/installation and performance 3pm- 6.30pm.
Tickets are free, but should be booked in advance through the
Traverse Theatre box office, Edinburgh.
The Herald, November 6th 2012
ends
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