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Milena BonillaPublic Movement Arin RungjangShitamichi Motoyuki Emilija Škarnulyte.

Sriwhana Spong

1

February 7–April 21, 2018

Marie Martraire, curator

Shona Findlay, assistant curator

3 IF

Public monuments and human bodies may appear to have little in common. Erected in parks, squares, and other public sites, monuments glorify and memorialize particular national ideals and triumphs. Common materials for their construction such as marble, granite, and bronze, are chosen to withstand the physical ravages of time, with the assumption that a unified vision of the past will remain as everlasting and fixed as each structure’s location in the city-scape. In contrast, living human bodies maintain memories through occasional rituals and commemorations that engage the subjective, the individual, and the corporeal in both public and private spheres.1 Monuments thus seem static, colossal, and immutable, while bodies appear fragile, ephemeral, and alterable. Despite their differences, public monuments and human bodies also share intrinsic similarities in the ways they occupy space. The two fundamental positions in which monuments are presented and perceived–vertical and horizontal–have emerged from our bodily ex-perience of standing up and lying down.2 An upward direction activates the function of a monument and the memories it commemorates while conveying ideas of robustness, permanence, and power. A horizontal orientation suggests downfall or death, like the iconic image of the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in 2003. Since human bodies have the ability to adopt a multitude of positions beyond standing up and lying down, could alternative body postures conceivably inspire new modes of presenting and experiencing monuments both physically and intuitively? Further, could they facilitate more nuanced understandings of the complex histories put forward by such monuments? In the United States, statues honoring Confederate heroes have been repeatedly con-demned for their religious, racial, and gender prejudices, with no collective agreement on how to address such biases. Meanwhile, contemporary monuments continue to be built with the same glorify-ing purposes, despite the serious questions around their legitimacy. Reassessing the signifying power of monuments and their relation to the human body thus seems pertinent.

5 STONES4 THESE

a relationship between memory, transience, and commemoration. In a video played intermittently, Emilija Škarnulyte. follows her grandmother, Aldona, during her daily walk as she slowly traces the cracked surfaces of Soviet-era statues with her fingers, discerning the past through its physicality. In the last gallery, Arin Rungjiang’s semifictional video 246247596248914102516 … And then there were none (2017) documents the fabrication of a replica of the ambiguous Democracy Monument in Bangkok, intercut with two dancers moving slowly and organically through key Nazi sites in Berlin.4 As the dancers interact with each other, their movements become a living nonverbal language using the body itself to express emotion.5 In all these works, the rate of motion–the slowness of the dancer’s procession, the grandmother’s gestures, and the woman dancing on the beach–comes from the rhythm and speed of the performers’ movements in real time, as opposed to post-production manipulation. The physical deceleration of the protagonists’ movements reemphasizes the fragile realities and complications in the distinctions between past, present, and future memories. Lastly, modern architects often describe the surface of a building as its “skin” and, like the largest organ of the human body, the skin of a monument protects from exterior attacks that nevertheless leave scars and other marks, altering its appearance.6 Yet the skin is also our key sensor of touch and may well play an active role in the processing of history embodied in monuments. The artworks by Milena Bonilla, Arin Rungjang, and Emilija Škarnulyte. consider touch as a way of knowing. Škarnulyte.’s grandmother gently caresses the surfaces of gigantic Soviet statues, insects and mollusks slowly glide over a stone plaque in Bonilla’s video Stone Deaf (2009), and in Rungjang’s video a digital scanner records every detail of the Democracy Monument in regular strokes. Echoing one another, these movements of rubbing and touching all purposefully feel their way in order to record the cracks, bumps, and other irregularities on the stones’ skins. The analogy between the skins of bodies and of monuments also suggests one between touching, preserving, and archiving histories.

The group show If These Stones Could Sing features nine artworks by Milena Bonilla, Public Movement, Arin Rungjang, Shitamichi Motoyuki, Emilija Škarnulyte. , and Sriwhana Spong that explore the potential of corporeal postures, gestures, and movements to individually address, acknowledge and make sense of a troublesome collective past embodied in public monuments. Spanning photography, video, drawing, and performance, the artworks on view highlight the construction and validation of national narratives found in public monuments or cultural artifacts. Displayed at varying heights and angles, these works unfold new ways of experiencing monuments and their histories. The exhibition opens with a wall suddenly falling, menacing, in the direction of viewers. Public Movement’s synchronized choreography of collapse echoes the possibility of transgressing borders, such as state frontiers or even the museum wall itself. The performance induces a sense of uncertainty, crisis, and doubt. Throughout the exhibition, photographs by Shitamichi Motoyuki trace the current purposes and conditions of torii (Shinto gates) erected in various areas across Asia and the Pacific that were under Japanese occupation during World War II. Blurring the line between art photography and photographic documentation,3 Shitamichi’s works do not depict the aftermaths of violent incidents or directly show individual suffering, unlike journalistic photo-reportage. Instead, they feature colonial remnants that have lost their initial symbolic significance, looking peaceful and almost-timeless. The jarring contrast between the present calm of these once-sacred gates and the often-brutal historical realities invite viewers to contemplate the current meaning of frontiers, territory, and traditions. Individual bodies in several of the works in the exhibition appear in incessant movement–touching, toppling, gliding–as they interact with public monuments, real or imagined. In the middle gallery, the woman in Sriwhana Spong’s Beach Study (2012) sways as her body moves between various dance positions–inclined, semi-leaning, or curled up. The body’s imbalance and instability suggest

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In the works and the exhibition, the body becomes a site of engagement in the formations of histories, subjectivities, and movements as the extended conception of temporality echoes the complicated relationship between history and memory.

–Marie Martraire

MILENA BONILLA born in 1975, based in Amsterdam

Stone Deaf 2009 Graphite on paper 63 x 39 3/8 inches

Stone Deaf 2009 HD single-channel video 5:00 minutes loop

Stone Deaf traces the history of Karl Marx’s gravesite in Highgate Cemetery in London. As the result of a petition by the British Communist Party, Marx’s remains were moved in 1954 from their initial location to the main avenue of the same cemetery, and in 1956 a 12-foot-high bust of Marx was erected. The original gravesite can still be identified among the weeds, where a broken stone marker announces to visitors that Marx and his family are no longer buried there. Bonilla’s video features ants, wasps, and a snail crawling along this plaque, obscuring the history of Marx’s burial. Implying the process of stones rubbing as a method of recording history, their slow movements highlight the carved inscriptions, the porosity of the material, the cracks in the stone. In a separate gallery, a framed rubbing of the plaque physically stands as an anti-monument, with the holes and waves in the fragile paper suggesting the impermanence of political positions.

Milena Bonilla actively investigates our often-

fallible notions of history through everyday

interventions that trace interactions between

nature, politics, and cultural production.

Exploring the Aristotelian dichotomy between

physis (nature) and logos (reason), she confronts

our biases regarding the relationships between

thought and action, between knowledge as a

work force and nature as an entity colonized by

language and consumed through images.

9 ARTISTS8

PUBLIC MOVEMENT established in 2006, headquartered in Tel Aviv

Falling Wall 2015 Performance Approximately 4:00 minutes

Falling Wall is a choreography consisting of a wall, three performers wearing uniforms, and a short ritual. The performers stand aligned in front of the wall, which suddenly falls, menacingly, in the direction of the viewers. The synchronicity of collapse echoes the possibility of transgressing borders such as state frontiers or even the museum wall. While the highly orchestrated movements of the performers may suggest a state funeral or memorial, the destruction becomes part of the act of commemoration, contradicting the supposed immutability of monuments and history sealed in the past.

The first performance of Falling Wall took place in the exhibition National Collection at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, curated in 2015 by Ruti Direktor.

The performative research group Public

Movement explores the creation of national,

social, and political identities through public

choreographies. By reenacting commemorative

ceremonies, formal exercises from the youth

scouts, or emergency procedures, the troupe

examines the social choreography of public

spaces. They study and reproduce the codes

and symbols of what constitutes a nation-state,

engaging audiences to realize their positions with

the geopolitics of space.

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ARIN RUNGJANG born in 1975, based in Bangkok

246247596248914102516 … And then there were none 2017 HD single-channel video, color, sound 46:26 minutes

246247596248914102516 … And then there were none narrates a semifictional account centered around the history of the Democracy Monument in Bangkok and lesser-known aspects of the political relationships between Thailand and Germany, enemies during World War I and allies during World War II. Erected in 1939 after a junta took over monarchic power, the monument became a symbolic manifestation of military tyranny, fascism, and the practice of paying lip service to Thai democracy. Forty years later, 400,000 people demonstrated against the new military government by marching towards the Democracy Monument, ushering in a period of extreme unrest and violence that included the massacre of student demonstrators in 1973. In Rungjang’s work, while the audio narration interweaves his own family story with grander narratives, images of workers creating a replica of the monument’s bas-relief are intercut with dancers moving slowly and organically through various former Nazi sites in Berlin. Weaving together the different status of the Thai and German monuments, these fluid, evocative movements open up a complicated history that has unfolded across multiple generations, eras, and locations, and in doing so, challenges this constructed space we call history.

Arin Rungjang is known for revisiting historical

and political narratives, overlapping major and

minor accounts across various times, locations,

and languages. In a practice involving particularly

video and site-specific installations, Rungjang

nimbly draws together lesser-known stories,

often linked to Thai history, to reveal their inter-

sections and situate them within the present day.

13 ARTISTS12

SHITAMICHI MOTOYUKI born in 1978, based in Aichi

Sakhalin, Russia; Saipan, U.S.A; and Taichung, Taiwan, from the torii series 2006–12 3 type-C prints each 20 x 24 inches

In the torii series, Shitamichi photographs the remains of once-sacred Shinto gates in places across Asia and the Pacific previously occupied by Japan. The title of each photograph indicates its location. In Saipan, a torii rests in a cemetery covered up by plants, while in Taichung City, another is laid on its side and used as a park bench; in Sakhalin, a third appears lost in the landscape, almost invisible. The photographs document the new public purposes and everyday contexts of these abandoned torii that have lost their initial symbolic significance. The physical aspects and positions of the gates record the gradual changes in the daily habits of the people around them and offer chances to contemplate the current meaning of frontiers, territory, and traditions.

Shitamichi Motoyuki’s photographic documents

are often a result of serendipity. He lets himself

be guided by his various encounters as he traces

places where collective memories manifest in or

intersect with the lived and shared environment.

As a consequence, his works provide

opportunities to consider the gradual changes

in communities’ daily customs and how they

interlace with their physical surroundings.

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EMILIJA ŠKARNULYTE. born in 1987, based in Tromsø and Berlin

Aldona 2013 HD single-channel video 13:00 minutes

Škarnulyte. ’s video follows the artist’s grandmother, Aldona, during her daily walk through the Grutas Park in Lithuania. Founded ten years after the collapse of USSR, this privately-owned sculpture park features close to a hundred Soviet-era statues collected from all over the country. As similar statues were often taken down or destroyed in neighboring Soviet countries, the exhibition center became a unique yet controversial resource. In the video, viewers witness Aldona groping for these monuments along the leafy forest road and gently caressing their surfaces to feel their cracks and comprehend their scale. Aldona is revealed to be visually impaired, so holding, patting, and touching the monuments with her hands becomes her process of uncovering and comprehending the past.

Emilija Škarnulyte. explores the psychological

power that our environment holds over us.

Intertwining fiction with documentary, her videos

and multimedia installations ponder the invisible

relations between the physical world and our

social imaginary, from the notion of geologic

time and its influence on our relation with history

to the way violent conflicts inscribe themselves

in the earth’s structure and vice versa.

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SRIWHANA SPONG born in 1979, based in London

Beach Study 2012 16mm film transferred to HD video 7:30 minutes

Beach Study explores ideas of disappearance, stability, and ephemerality, both physical and psychological. In the film, a woman conducts abstract dance movements on a beach, responding to the environment that surrounds her. This particular beach is one the artist loved as a child and was an important gathering site for local communities in the 1960s and 1970s, but today it is only reachable by boat due to the privatization of its land access. Shot on 16mm film through colored filters, the film has intense flashes of magenta, violet, and amber, along with other flickering “light leak” effects. The dancer appears and disappears intermittently, creating a surreal and mysterious presence. When visible, the figure never stands completely straight or lies down. Rather, she sways between various body positions as if in search of balance and stability. The overall effect suggests an embodied relationship between collective memory, transience, and commemoration.

Sriwhana Spong’s works directly engage the

body and its relationship to history, place,

and time. Spong frequently employs aspects

of dance, whose ephemerality carries both a

sense of loss and the potency of the present.

By manipulating sequences of gestures through

film-editing techniques, she investigates how

dance movements can register particular events

in our collective memories.

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KADIST, SAN FRANCISCO3295 20th StreetSan Francisco, CA 94110kadist.org

Hours Wed–Sat 12–5pm, or by appointment

DIRECTORDevon Bella

MEDIA & PRODUCTIONPete Belkin

EDITORJuliet Clark

COMMUNICATION & ASIA PROGRAMSShona Findlay

PRINT DESIGNDavid Khan-Giordano

ASIA PROGRAMSMarie Martraire

COLLECTIONSAmanda Nudelman

NORTH AMERICA PROGRAMSJordan Stein

SPECIAL THANKSStephen Canham Ma’ayan ChoreshCosmin CostinasDancers Group Ziying DuanĀrāsh FayezInti GuerreroMary HoganAlhena KatsofLaura Kiernan Lihi LeviNathan Link Monika LipšicJoe MelamedDaniel MeloMills College Adi NachmanJesus ParizoPerforming Arts Department of University of San Francisco Anthony Russell Emilija Škarnulyte. Stijn SchiffelersDana YahalomiWendy Veronica XinSophia WangSmallWorks

CREDITSAldona generously loaned by the artist. All other artworks in Kadist collection. All images copyright and courtesy the artists. Public Movement’s photographs on page 10 by Kfir Boloti.

KADIST