It turned out to be a fine day for a pick-nick. Some cloud cover to accompany us on the trip, which went smoothly. We were 26, just the group for an alphabet – and so a homage to the AZART and absentee Guy Rombouts, as well as being practically half the bus – 52 seater half full half empty- perfect! Angel had brought with him the soundtrack of his Straatman-opera we performed in Amsterdam (and Bxl) in 2002, but alas there were technical difficulties to get it on the speakers...
(view of Straatman during the Opera preparations at the W139 in Amsterdam 2002...)
... which was a pity... but replaced with some sight-seeing information and a first reading of a Spinoza proposition, one proposed by Domino Thirion concerning 'Laetitia directé mala non est. Tristitia autem contrà directè est mala' and with that reminded us of absentee Laetitia Yalon who would not have missed this trip for the world. Yes we were here to be happy, glad ...alegria! The idea that there might be too much glee as foreign to us as it was to Baruch... Aided by a sip of 'Pineau de Charentes' that was brought on board to commemorate a similar bus-trip (though a lot smaller) proposed by Jef Lambrecht 31 years earlier 'on the 22nd for his 44th' to the first 'intercontinentaal entrepot' at Kassel during documenta IX to lay the foundations of a new unitary 'Belgian People's Party' (Belgische Volkspartei, Belgische Volkspartij, Parti Populaire Belge) under the flag of 'Black, Brown and Beige'...
(invite for the kleine Löwenkonferenz 22 for 44, Kassel 1992)
Thus reminding us all that this was in fact not a fifty-fifty but a non-fifty-fifty trip, an archival exercise at best, or not (to quote A.W., another absentee enthusiast)... yet another absentee or excused member Bendy Glue could not make the long trip from southern France but sent an image to be used as a surrogate landscape while traveling under cover... (which we did surreptitiously) Once we had entered the region of the Borinage (the exact borders of which are subject to an extensive investigation currently under way at the map-room of the Buktapaktop) we were reminded to prepare for the upcoming disembarkation: a small test to ready ourselves for arrival...
(during the test the only member not under cover was our main straatman himself – here caught on camera by Claudia Radulescu, who also shot this stowaway cowboy (Grégoire Motte) who with his son Edgar was one of the last-minute participants)
We had failed to secure safe passage for everyone and anyone with the museum administration, so decided to issue 'Laissez Passers' to all on board, with the notion that we would clear the accounts afterwards rather than niggle at the counter in the entrance-hall... if this should fail in any way, we were quite prepared to re-shape the whole operation into a syndicalist intervention and picket the institution, which might have also been an interesting thing to do... but as it was, clear sailing, with each of the anonymously shrouded straat(wo)men receiving their stickers without any hiccups at all...and so we streamed seamlessly towards the large courtyard, drawn in by the statue of the founder De Gorge with his missing left arm...
(more on that later...)
And broke out the pick-nick baskets... each and everyone sharing tidbits, while more towards the arches a table was set up with some drink and salad offered by the museum and where we could refresh ourselves while considering some of the proposals in Spinoza's 3rd and 4th section... considering that as part of the 'substance' we can use a self-knowledge akin to intuition to grasp the concepts at hand... self-knowledge of the modes – 'in which the substance expresses itself in certain and particular ways...' (using convergent, divergent and lateral thinking)...
We did however run into a snag with some concepts concerning human bondage, or the powers of affects... mainly due to translation: I had with me a Latin-Dutch version, while most of our group was francophone...
But first we gathered for a visit to 'in the instant' exhibition... beginning with the wondrous sculpture created by children with visual impairments... a plan-view of the museum turned into a hut, painted brightly with very discernible figurations... a perfect intro along a wall of early portraits into a light-emitting painting video of a visually impaired girl interacting with Abramovich... we donned our sheets and let the goings-on impress upon our selves as we were also impaired as it were, to understand more fully.
( Tolmacheff, Mott and Montalvo coulnd't resist turning this solemn moment into a Marxist scene.. photo C Radulescu.)
The next image was an actual projection in which we the works of art could actually partake and participate in the projection of the painter painting the town of Castellón back in 2009 – and after being part of this (retro)projection (for the viewer under wraps – from the outside as regular projection) and emerging into the light (of the projector) it was the Maestro Pintor himself who was stigmatized by the museum's designer balustrade... Ouch!
(here Maestro Pintor explains his origins after being stigmatized – soon blood would flow from his wound – flanked by Maria with the flaming red hair (Degrève) and a bearded Moïsé Obst, long time acolyte, as well as Nep Nö, the state-street woman from Budapest - foto Toni G.)
Climbing the long flight of stairs to the great hall of traces, where Straatman had gestured his way out of blackened canvasses to the sound of classical modern music (voice, violin) at Vervoort along the Albert Canal near Antwerp in (2019?) - it was difficult to refrain from participating and cleaning all the rest of the sooty black from the canvasses, which would have created quite a situation!... from there to the old movies – the 8mm-strips we know from the eighties – in fact, once the maestro pintor projected his strips on strips under a white shroud – a sort of private interior straatman viewing at inexistent... 1989 I think... here though were many an expired friend and fifty-fifty aficionado to be seen in better times...
(straatman projection inexistent 1989)
(amalgamated super-8 strips looped into an ongoing movie nostalgia)
Next was in fact becoming artwork oneself, entering into the realm of straatman, weaving between associative bits & pieces, fragments, views, connecting and disconnecting lines of errance and reference and historical pieces mingling with chance encountered, all reminiscent of past activities.. a fluid retrospective through which you can flow along different lines, observing every time a different combination of affects... and effects.
The next interludium, a space between spaces much like the synaps of our nerve-endings, is a personal thing – each to their own, uncovered or under cover, to take a moment to acknowledge these two special people – Isi and Bernd, who in their heyday brought about the special mix of verve and talent that made the corner behind the museum in Antwerp such an international hub of the latest goings-on... A to B, and here I think of more than one B: Beuys, Broodthaers, Byars... who in turn influence us to this day...
(both graves were part of this operation – visiting Bernd at the beginning of plans and Isi towards the end... just before the pick-nick... (here a splash of liquid sustenance as gesture)
The great hall with it's large format communal patchwork-quilt-style paintings, becoming interior (land) scape of the endless dance, the whirling of straatman through time and places all over the world, be it Ripple Bar in Tokyo or the shifting sands of the Sinai desert...
(in the crypt inexistent graves, the actual bodies are inhumed elsewhere)
for a group-visit to the crypt there was not enough time... still work to do... sewing together some sheets to make one large enough for the monumental statue of De Gorge who had lost his left arm... a mystery that is prone to speculation... and some interesting stories – one of which related by Jérôme André of the museum; - concerns the inception of the museum- at the moment that the deed was to be signed between the architect who had saved the site from destruction and the province promising to create a contemporary art-site... a great storm appeared and the night before the signing lightning struck the statue of De Gorge... blowing him to pieces... (and the moment his arm went missing... alas no, it seems the arm was already gone... another theory is souvenir-hunters, or, considering the times the mine was closed, communist and republican sentiment still ran high... who's nose, do you think?)
All we could do is pay homage to this visionary and more-or-less philanthropic capitalist, taking with one hand and giving with the other (which is which, missing or not?) by offering him a straatman-costume and posing for a commemorative photograph bearing our left arms...
(from left to right in no order )
Guy Condé-Reis, Simone Gulden, Frederic Tolmacheff, Corinne Bertrand, Annick Nölle, Domino Thirion, Guy Cardoso, Lieve Lambrecht, Angel Vergara, Toni Geirlandt, Carlos Montalvo, Lise Duclaux et François, Claire Lavendomme, Claudia Radulescu, Beatrice Delcorde, David Evrard, Raya Lindberg & daughter, Veronique Dockx, Gregoire Motte & son, Heini Obst, Carine van Erps, Marc Lambrechts, and friend absent but there in spirit...
There was not much time for a philosophical debate, but we did make some references to Isi's favorite thinker, Spinoza, throughout the day and the confusion concerning the index and note-structuring between Dutch and French versions had us searching for the concept of 'Conatus' (ref Efficiendi est Ambitio III 31s) which Raya Lindberg wanted to expand upon but could not find the right reference in the Dutch version, and translation in French being not readily on hand we were flailing In the dark for a while - until Dominique Thirion came along with a French version – by which time the discourse had wafted along and become somewhat dispersed...
(wiki describes it thus; Spinoza's 'conatus' is a signal concept of his thought and one which appears as an axiom of modern treatments, particularly those of a political nature. Famously, the conatus doctrine provides: Each thing insofar as it is in itself, endeavours to persevere in its being.)
...but that was the nature of this open-air symposium under cover, the chance encounter or chance operations which conspired to get a sewing machine (for the drapes) and an umbrella (for the rain, which did not materialize – but the brolly was used to create a circle) and an operations-table, being that of a temporary pick-nick-office of this section of the European Theatre of Operations...
(magic moment in the correography as manu t. atempts a solo - photo by Annick Nölle)
To wit; the last manifestation was a short interlude base on the basic premise of Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle - having quickly made a light dusted circle with Bolognese chalk (was going to use craie de Chamapgne but didn't find any – it was as wink towards Bernd, for whom ephemeral chalk was the perfect counterbalance to the heavy beams he used) up on the one side powerful art institutions, semi-public and private, (played by Manu Tete) and on the other side the authorized arstist (rather than the rights-holder) (played by Marc Lambrechts) and in the middle the poor artwork (interpreted sumptuously by Canine van Erps) on who's behalf this tug-of-war is to be executed...
As the role of hapless anarchist poet Azdak who would be the presiding judge, Carlos M was chosen by popular acclaim. Proceedings were as in the original (in sketch form) until the judgment was to be made: expecting something along the lines of the judgment of Solomon, we were pleasantly surprised when the judge amalgamated into Dialogist-Kantor under the drapes, mingling as one and refusing to order a binary judgment at all: they were to lay aside their differences and live harmoniously together in a state of love, with no need for police cells or baton charges...
Judgment time: Dialogist-Kantor dissolving the issue through love: art institution and authorized artist go Scott-free, and the artwork is allowed to be it's natural self!
….on that positive and fraternal note we had to gather our things together in a hurry, since the bus was already waitung to take us back into the maelstrom of the civic life outside the walls of this grand cricus maximus of an arena.... to round off I offer you a portrait of Straatman (brandishing pastels) and his monumental effigy.... long live Straatman!
