Paradise Row Gallery
74 Newman Street
London W1T 3EL

MARGARITA GLUZBERG
AVENUE DES GOBELINS

18 NOVEMBER – 23 DECEMBER 2011

Borrowing its title from one of Eugene Atget’s iconic photographs of Parisian shop fronts, Avenue des Gobelins is a meditation on the mystical, ritual nature of material desire and consumption. The central work of this exhibition is a slide-loop projection, The Consumystic. By double and triple-exposing the film, Gluzberg adopts the analogue photographic techniques of the Surrealists to produce a mesh of consumer signs and spaces: the black gleaming lacquer of Chanel, reconfigured by the chaos of a Saturday afternoon at Primark.

I am also updating, uploading and making some things available. In general, dragging things out until I they lead me somewhere else.

You can now see the photobook I submitted for my PhD here … As for the textual work, well, that somewhere else I want to go might be publication so I am holding the text for a while. Still, if you want a copy, do get in touch and I will happily respond.

Olivier Theyskens for Nina Ricci, Fall/Winter 2007/2008, by Julien Claessens.

I am so sorry I have been neglecting writing to you. The end of the self-inflicted exile from these pages is near. Here’s a quick calendar update:
—— The practice was submitted on Friday 1 October 2010
—— The thesis submission is planned for 1 December
—— The Mock Viva is on the 19th January
—— The real thing is scheduled for 16 February

After that, I am, hopefully, all yours.

In the meantime, you can read a lovely conversation I have had with Alexandra Melissa Korley, published in Illywords. We talk about colour, Duchamp’s Étant Donnés and Casanova, and I give an essential reading list. Don’t expect straight answers for me, though. I have learned enough about seduction to know how to work a tease. Still, I hope you enjoy it.

Till February, with trepidation,

Laura

Here’s what Nicky Bird, Bran Nicol and I will be discussing on Saturday morning:

ART AND THE STRANGER: LISTENING, SEDUCING, STALKING

How does one relate to whom one doesn’t know? The stranger is all around us; we cross his path many times per day. The position of the stranger is a reversible one: for the other, it is us that take its place. The question has implications in relation to the work of art, as artists have attempted a direct engagement with strangers as part of their practices, or, indirectly, though the encounter of their work with the viewer. The stranger also has significance in the psychoanalytic setting, where the patient reveals her innermost secrets to a stranger, and the analyst invites one to the consulting room, also usually his home. Drawing from a variety of practices, from film and art to literature and psychoanalysis, this panel proposes three approaches to the unknown person, the stranger.

First, through the act of listening, we attempt to recognize ourselves in the stranger, to establish a bond, a relationship with him. Listening, however, is a very complicated endeavour. How can one listen, really listen, to an other? In his writing, Sigmund Freud proposes a technique called evenly-hovering-attention, which aims at shifting the emphasis from the meaning of the words to a more rounded approach to the other’s speech. This paper will draw from collaborative and performative practices, where the work emerges either from a conversation with a person or a group, then unknown, but becoming something else through the engagement, or from a playful and slightly mischievous activity: eavesdropping.

The consequences of being involved in the acts of talking and listening can be very varied, from friendship to love, transference and countertransference –the particular relationship of identifications between analyst and patient. But before these are arrived at, there is another interim stage, which the second paper in this panel will explore: seduction. Attracted by the stranger, we surrender our free will to his mystery. Works of art use diverse techniques to seduce so the second speaker will perform, impersonate, frame and follow –to name but a few strategies– to engage with the strangers in the audience.

But seduction hangs in a fine balance, it is already at the edge of morality. The obsession with a stranger, whom, in a delusional state, one believes one knows, will be the subject of the third paper. The act of stalking is the pursuit of someone as part of an investigation, or with a criminal intent. It involves a multitude of acts and is often the continued return of a rejected proposition –just like the repressed returns. The outcome can, as in the case of Sophie Calle, lead to a nice trip to Venice, a court appearance or, as happened to Agnetha Fältskog, a relationship ending in disaster.

These three papers, with their differing approaches and strategies to engage with the stranger, will make the audience consider their own everyday encounters in, for example, supermarket queues, art installations, trains, therapeutic relationships, lifts.

The full papers will be published on the website or the new Transmission: Annual journal after the event so watch this space!

You are cordially invited to the Private View of the show, which will take place on Friday 16th April, at 6pm.

I liked participating in something that is beyond my PhD, something that the degree will hopefully enable me to do more of, and more often. I like writing. I like writing books, even. I will go as far as to say that I like the publishing process despite editors, going over words time and time again and working with writing done over two years ago. Publishing is not for the faint hearted, or the impatient. Neither is writing, I am finding out. I am going to contradict myself: I hate writing, but I like to have written and seeing the cover of the book, with the title of my chapter and my name next to it (its accent in the right place) brought me that proud feeling, that well-being.

All the more because, as I mention in my chapter, I am coming into this as an outsider. I am a fine artist, writing about a design piece for a book on management. Of course I wasn’t sure about it but I followed my friend Glyn’s advice: when you are starting, never say no. To anything. I was lucky that the team that edited the book have been very supportive and have done an excellent job. They were very kind to strangers. And from that position, one I know very well (because I constantly seek it), I have been able to produce something I am quite happy with, as it gives an outlet to a bit of research that, sadly, did not have any place in the 40,000 words of my PhD. Still, readers will find my usual obsessive self in my words; there is also seduction, psychoanalysis and admiration of a creative piece of design that I am very happy to own.

With thanks to Charlotte who bought Juicy Salif for me when I left my last job and told me about her shopping experience, which partly inspired the chapter.

It’s just because I have picked up a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don’t hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you’ve seen it it’s still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it’s a platitude.

From The Arrow of Heaven, in The Incredulity of Father Brown