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In the late twentieth century, postmodernists declared that the "end
of history" had arrived. Not literally describing a cessation of events,
the theory holds that a true account of facts can no longer be discerned
and that history and truth are not a matter of fact, but rather a matter
of interpretation. False Witness includes installations by three
artists—Joan Fontcuberta and the team of Nicholas Kahn and Richard
Selesnick—whose work is grounded in the idea of the malleability
of history, memory, and fact. Working with photography and texts (injected
with a great deal of humor), they turn our belief in the truthfulness
of photographs against us and create elaborate hoaxes that falsify historic
events.
Joan Fontcuberta is represented by Sputnik. Sponsored by the
Sputnik Foundation, the extensively researched installation details
the life of Ivan Istochnikov, a Russian cosmonaut who, we are told,
disappeared during the flight of Soyuz 2 in 1968 and was then removed
from history by the Soviet bureaucracy. Photographs of Istochnikov were
retouched to remove his likeness, his family was moved to Siberia, and
his friends and colleagues were threatened. Fontcuberta researched the
topic for ten years, visiting space museums in the US and the Soviet
Union and interviewing former cosmonauts. The exhibition materials--family
photos of Istochnikov, as well as publicity shots, newspaper articles,
archival and documentary material concerning the US-Soviet space race,
technical photographs transmitted from space, documentary videos, a
fragment of a meteorite, a space capsule, and uniforms worn by Istochnikov—seem
real. They are, instead, a combination of archival materials, manipulated
photographs, and wholly false images.
Istochnikov is, in fact, Fontcuberta (the artist used his own likeness
because of ease of availability, but by doing so he has also inserted
himself into history). The name Ivan Istochnikov is an approximate translation
of his own, Joan Fontcuberta.
When first shown at the Foundation of Art and Technology, Madrid, in
1997, the exhibition drew an alarmed response and protests from the
Russian ambassador; the hoax of Sputnik was complete and the premise
was well supported by knowledge of the secrecy that surrounded the Soviet
space program and Stalin's practice of removing disenfranchised persons
from history. With Sputnik, Fontcuberta created an illusion that meshes
seamlessly with our experience.
Kahn and Selesnick are represented by their joint project, Transmissions
from the Schottensumpfkunftig (Scotlandfuturebog). Working collaboratively
since the 1980s, they have created narrative installations that tangle
truth and fiction. Transmissions stretches credulity to its limits
by positing a future society of non-literate bog dwellers, which is
known to us only through photographic documents and artifacts that have
somehow been sent back through time. Bogseers, Woolcarriers, and Snailpaceshepherds
inhabit this world of Underworlddoors and Timewindowsinkholes. The artists'
use of sculptural materials—lard, wax, peat, hide, intestines--recalls
Joseph Beuys, and the photographic compositions—strangely clad
figures in vast, barren landscapes—Odd Nerdrum. But it is the enigmatic
actions of the bog dwellers that are most intriguing. They appear to
perform ritualistic acts of contemplation or meditations: they stand
within circular structures; hold crystalline pyramids toward the sky;
and again and again lie (or levitate), bound like mummies, around various
cone- or pyramid-shaped objects.
Kahn and Selesnick's titles—long composite German words of their
own creation—parallel their construction of fictional reality.
Two delightfully labyrinthine texts offer contradictory suppositions
about the bog dwellers' existence. Clever and amusing in their own right,
the texts do not clarify the installation. Rather they provide an additional
layer of philosophical complexity, suggesting a world in which time
and matter are as malleable as history. But, one suspects that Kahn
and Selesnick, while intrigued by the metaphysics, are more interested
in entertainment. In fact, the main impression of viewers is likely
to be that these guys are having a lot of fun and that the fun is palpable
and contagious.
We wish to thank the artists and their representatives at Zabriskie
Gallery, New York, David Beitzel Gallery, New York, and Pepper Gallery,
Boston.
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