Scream

Freeway, Free West

The War Correspondent

The Artist Posing as her Ego

Ha Ha

Annemieke Teresa van Twuijver 2008 DOGtime/02

Scream

a short epic about voicelessness,

desire and being shy In four parts

Scream #1a play with no wordsto be staged in a theatre

Scream #2performance

(no registration)23/09/2008, 20.15 hrs

duration: 87’

Woman stands in light circle of four 1000 watt spotlights placed on the floor (central in the project space). Head is covered in black cloth (face invisible). Woman does not move and does not

communicate with spectators. Performance ends when woman collapses.

Sculpture inspired by Scream #2. Bucket, iron tubes, Duct tape, armature, light bulbs, solid coconut cream (melting), washing bags. 56 x 38 x 38 cm.

Scream #3 video performance 21’36” (real time) looped

X

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeedAnd worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,

Let temple burn, or flax; an equal lightLeaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:

And love is fire. And when I say at needI love thee . . . mark! . . . I love thee--in thy sight

I stand transfigured, glorified aright,With conscience of the new rays that proceed

Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing lowIn love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures

Who love God, God accepts while loving so.And what I led, across the inferior features

Of what I am, doth flash itself, and showHow that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.

Scream #4video 1’56”Sonnet by: Elizabeth Barrett Browning Read by: Jaap Heyer

Freeway, Free West

reflections on the highway

Road Runner video performance 27” A2 Hannover-Berlin

freeway, free west (updated)road-runner-mp4Die Anlage des Berliner Rings geht zurück auf Albert Speers “Generalentwicklungsplan”, der ein gigantisches System von Ringautobahnen mit strahlenförmig davon ausgehenden Fernstraßen um Berlin vorsah. Bis Kriegsende konnte allerdings nur ein Teil (128 km) des Außenrings verwirklicht werden. Die Schließung des Berliner Rings mit einer Gesamtlänge von 195,8 km erfolgte erst 1979 mit der Fertigstellung des Teilstücks Potsdam/Nord-Nauen-Falkensee-Abzweig Rostock (=AD Havelland). Als es noch zwei deutsche Staaten gab und Berlin eine geteilte Stadt war, kam der A 2/A 10 eine überaus wichtige Funktion einer Transitverbindung zwischen dem Bundesgebiet und West-Berlin zu. Das Autobahnteilstück Marienborn/Helmstedt - Dreilinden war die kürzeste Straßenverbindung zwischen West-Berlin und dem damaligen Gebiet der Bundesrepublik. Da die DDR-Behörden ab September 1951 bis zum Inkrafttreten des Transitabkommens 1971 nach Entfernung gestaffelte Straßenbenutzungsgebüh-ren erhoben, die jeder Kraftfahrer individuell zu entrichten hatte, lag es nahe, diesen kürzesten Weg zu wählen. Who would be surprised if Albert Speer’s dream of everlasting supremacy of Das Reich indeed included the idea that all major roads in Europe should lead to Berlin, like formerly all roads led to Rome? In such a scheme, there is no way to travel and not to end up, eventually, in the most important city of them all, the ideological, political and military HQ.Speer failed, Das Reich crumbled. Not all roads lead to Berlin, just some. And every traveller can choose to take that road - or not. Roads - as a fixed route to travel from and to a fixed destinaton - came into existence approximately 8000 BC, when the first town in history, Jericho, raised itself on the elevated grounds near the springs of Elisha. The raise of Jericho may be considered the cradle of civilisation: ‘the village’ as a civic construction for living together as a group calls for the specific system of social engagement and rules that is called ’social order’. In the village people ’specialise’ into bakers, butchers, haberdashers, and so on, and therefore enter neccessary interdepend relations that are essential for survival, which also means they will have to find an agreement or a certain concensus about decisions that concern all. (This is the cradle of politics.) After Jericho more urban settlements followed and more roads were built to con-nect them. In his book ‘Ways of the World’ (1992), M.G. Lay argues that in times of peace roads became the foundation of trade (better said economy) between settlements. Trade benefits from freedom as a means to do good business. A tradesman likes to choose his best market. Roads and freedom go hand in hand, like cities and civilisation.Ways of the World. A History of World’s Roads and the VehiclesThat Used Them by M.G. Lay:http://books.google.nl/books?id=flvS-nJga8QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=ways+of+the+world&ei=ylETSfmtDp6QswOtl7G1Ag)Marshall McLuhan in his groundbreaking work ‘ Understanding Media: The Extentions of Man’ (1964) looks at the origin of roads from a totally different perspective. He argues that when man invented the wheel, the wheel called for roads in order to use it. The wheel required ‘road for its completion’. And when roads were subsequenty built, they needed to have a purpose attached to them as well. There-fore settlements were built to complete the roads. McLuhan even suggests that in the Thirteenth century suddenly more roads and more cities developed because somebody invented the horse collar, which led to the creation of the four wheel wagon with pivoted front axles, brakes and the capacity to carry heavier loads (to complete the horse collar), which led to more trade and more travel (to complete the four wheel wagon), which led to more roads and more cities (to complete the increased rate of trade and travel). According to this theory, the system of roads and cities, also seen as the backbone of civilisation, was a rather organic but inevitable consequence of the invention of the wheel.McLuhan is of the opinion that the road is our major architectural form.The full text of ‘Understanding Media: The Extentions of Man’ can be found on the website Cult of Jim:http://cultofjim.com/scripture/understanding_media/McLuhans basic assumption is that every extention of the body (i.e. every ‘technical’ invention) focusses on scale and exhiliration in order for humans to gain more power. ‘To extend our bodily postures and motions into new materials, by way of amplification, is a constant drive for more power’. Things constantly become ‘more’ accordingly. In the course of history, technological ‘extentions’ have become bigger and faster. Wagons developed into cars, roads developed into freeways.The word ‘freeway’ was coined in the mid-1930’s in the United States. It refers to a road that is designed exclusively for high speed motor vehicles, with no access for other kinds of wheel-based travel means, like bicycles and trains. Cross traffic is eliminated and railway crossings are removed. There are basically no stop signs of traffic lights. The freeway system is the foundation of the free West. It is an array of arteries that connects cities, countries and continents. One can travel from A to B, or from Amsterdam to Berlin, at will and at leisure. The freeway forms the connection between people’s habitats – villages, towns, cities and capitals – and people’s enterprises – industry, business, retail and consuming. As such, the freeway can be consid-ered the ‘life line’ for urban existence, especially in the so-called West, where urban life is more prominent than country life.The freeway is accessible to all people. Everybody who drives a car makes use of the freeway (and in the free West this group forms the bulk of topulation - Marshall McLuhan states that for youngsters it is considered to be more important to reach the age of being able to hold a driver’s license than to reach the age to vote). It is always busy on the freeway, day and night, especially during rush hours. The freeway is the highest frequented public space in modern society: during the span of 24 hours it is visited by more people than say a public square in a big city, a train station or an international airport. The stream of people (cars) is endless; never stopping and never varying. Jean Baudrillard, who travelled extensively in the United States and wrote essays about his observations, called this company of people on the freeway - mostly strangers - the ‘real and only’ society, the warm and comforting suggestion of a never changing phenomenon - ‘the collective compulsion of lemmings massively committing suicide’. He went to America first and foremost to look for the ‘emtpy, absolute freedom of the freeways’:‘I went in search of astral America, not social and cultural America, but the America of the empty, absolute freedom of the freeways, not the deep America of mores and mentalities, but the America of desert speed, of motels and mineral surfaces. I looked for it in the speed of the screenplay, in the indifferent reflex of television, in the film of days and nights projected across an empty space, in the marvellously affectless succession of signs, images, faces, and ritual acts on the road; looked for what was nearest to the nuclear and enucleated universe, a universe which is virtually our own, right down to its European cottages.’ http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-america-excerpts2.htmlEven though Baudrillard calls the freeway ‘the real society’, it is devoid of the contacts and communications that usually define a ’social order’ or society. Moreover, it is not meant to have such com-munications. Serving as an artery, it should stay ‘unclogged’ to vouchsafe unobstructed transport. The freeway is not constructed for human contact but for human transport. Therefore a freeway is divided in two seperate parts that do not merge (one stream going from A to B and one stream going in the opposite direction from B to A). Users of the freeway are in transit, locked in their own private world of travelling by motor car. When they stop by choice, it is only to take a break from the driving to eat, drink, urinate, rest or sleep. In this way the freeway is uniquely different from other public spaces, like public squares in cities, train stations and international airports. Freeways do not entice, invite or encourage people to make contact with each other. In a sense, the freeway is the herald of individualism. People are crammed on the freeway, but people do not ‘meet’ on the freeway.With the following exceptions. These occurrances can be divided into five categories1. Situations that lead people to meet and communicate on the freeway:- unusual or enduring traffic jams- road blocks- detours- accidents- breakdowns; technical, mental or otherwise- road rage (‘bumper harassment’, ‘the new york second’)- shoulder camping- police or military hold ups- armed robbery- suicide attempts; successfully, unsuccessfully or otherwise- road kill- car chases- violent attacks; terrorist, juvenile or otherwise- war2. Lifestyles and living conditions that induce regular social interaction between people on the freeway, typically outsiders or even outcasts of mainstream Western society such as:- easy riders/hell’s angels- gypsies- poor people- serial killers- gay men cruising- border jumpers- drifters going nowhere- addicts, glue or gasoline- runaway children- fancy car spotters- lovers; newly, secret or otherwise - road buddies; Thelma and Louise or otherwise- activists; antiglobalists, euro-farmers or otherwise3. People who make special use of the freeway and are more likely to communicate with other people on the freeway:- hitch hikers- tourists and day trippers- truck drivers- construction workers- artists- Tour de France-cyclists- journalists looking for stories; traffic-related or otherwise4. Places in the vicinity of the freeway that give people a chance to meet:- highway cafe’s and hotels- parkings- gas stations- photo opportunity spots5. Media spectacles (i.e. mobile phone holding fugitives; criminal, political, economical or otherwise) http://theory.ideacritik.com

The War Correspondent

a curious distribution

of the sensiblepolitical

The War Correspondent installation (beamed footage 1”53” looped, writing on the wall)

Quick & Dirty Group Exhibition Contributing artists:

Daphne A. Koopman Marlon van der Pas

Marieke GreeveAnnemieke Teresa van Twui

No Remorse for Casualties sculpture

washing bag, elastic bands, iron hooks, armature, light bulb,

processed coconut cream.380 x 40 x 28 cm.

painted wood, construction box airplanes and helicopters, rubber coated wire 278 x 134 x 87 cm

Moletsi Kwalemotu (1971, Rwanda) Cassave #3

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The Artist Posing as her Ego

self as fiction

about: persona

In the study of communication, persona is a term given to describe the versions

of self that all individuals possess. Behaviours are selected according to the desired impression an individual

wishes to create when interacting with other people. Therefore, personae pre-sented to other people vary according

to the social environment the person is engaged in, in particular the persona

presented before others will differ from the persona an individual will present

when he/she happens to be alone.

Carl Jung said that, ‘The persona is that which in reality one is not, but which

oneself as well as others think one is.” Robert Johnson refers to the persona as our “psychological clothing.” The

persona refers to that aspect of the ego that we present to the world for its

approval. It is like a mask and we can hide behind it.

Center of the SubjectLacan argues that Freud’s discovery of the unconscious removed the ego from

the central position to which western philosophy, at least since Descartes,

had traditionally assigned it.Lacan also argues that the proponents

of ego-psychology betrayed Freud’s radical discovery by relocating the ego

as the center of the subject.In opposition to this school of thought,

Lacan maintains that the ego is not at the center, that the ego is in fact an

object.

[edit]IdentificationThe ego is a construction which is formed by identification with the

specular image in the Mirror stage.

[edit]AlienationIt is thus the place where the subject

becomes alienated from himself, trans-forming himself into the counterpart.

[edit]Paranoiac StructureThis alienation on which the ego is

based is structurally similar to para-noia, which is why Lacan writes that the ego has a paranoiac structure.[6]

[edit]Imaginary FormationThe ego is thus an imaginary forma-

tion, as opposed to the subject, which is a product of the symbolic.[7]

[edit]MéconnaissanceIndeed, the ego is precisely a

méconnaissance of the symbolic order, the seat of resistance.

[edit]SymptomThe ego is structured like a symptom:

“The ego is structured exactly like a symptom. At the heart of the subject, it

is only a privileged symptom, the human symptom

par excellence, the mental illness of man.”[8]

[edit]Analytic TreatmentLacan is therefore totally opposed to the idea, current in ego-psychology, that the aim of psychoanalytic treat-

ment is to strengthen the ego.Since the ego is

“the seat of illlusions”,[9]to increase its strength would only succeed in increasing the subject’s

alienation.

[edit]ResistanceThe ego is also the source of resistance

to psychoanalytic treatment, and thus to strengthen it would only increase

those resistances.Because of its imaginary fixity, the ego is resistant to all subjective growth and

change, and to the dialectical movement of desire.

By undermining the fixity of the ego, psychoanalytic treatment aims to restore the dialectic of desire and

reinitiate the coming-into-being of the subject.

[edit]AdaptationLacan is opposed to the ego-

psychology view which takes the ego of the analysand to be the ally

of the analyst in the treatment.He also rejects the view that the

aim of psychoanalytic treatment is to promote the adaptation of the ego to

reality.

(previous page)Clothes as they were put down just before their owner went to bedWith many thanks to:AngèleJayIrèneHenkTerriHukamDirkJanietaPeter en LaraMarisaVèroniqueHeinJesperLoïsDaphneEddie

The Artist Posing as her Egosnap shot (no PSH)coated xerox on foam board42 x 59 cmphotography Janne renout

Ha Ha

animated by the spectator

painted raincoat, black tub (hung from ceiling), drawings on Japanese paper, wire 150 x 95 x 53 cm - spectator must kick tub to set animation in motion