GALERIE MAISONNEUVE / RAINER GANAHL




Seminars/Lectures Pierre Bourdieu, Recherches récentes, Collège de France, Paris, 1/12/2000 photograph, 51 x 61 cm, 1995 - (on going project)


Press release - PDF version
Communiqué de presse - version PDF

Rainer Ganahl February 5 – March 29, 2003 Grégoire Maisonneuve is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition by Rainer Ganahl at the gallery. For this exhibition the artist is presenting his latest video work entitled Homeland Security, 2003, and, for the first time in France, a selection of his long term work with intellectuals entitled Seminars/Lectures.






*Seminars/Lectures* is an ongoing project and an attempt of a “representation of intellectuals” within their working environment. Since 1995, he has been visiting class rooms and public lectures of his interest in which he took photographs from the subjective position of a participant. These photographs give an observation of a field, namely critical cultural education, that is important for the productive reproduction of society. *Seminars/Lectures* est un projet en cours que Rainer Ganahl entend développer comme une tentative de représentation de la “communauté intellectuelle” au sein de son environnement de travail. Depuis 1995, Rainer Ganahl a assisté à des séminaires et des conférences publiques, guidé par ses intérêts. Dans ces différentes situations, il photographie en prenant la position subjective d’un auditeur. Ces photographies offrent un regard sur un champ, celui du savoir culturel et critique, important pour la construction de la société. L’éducation et la connaissance sont des sujets de contestation et de conflit car ils reflètent les tensions et les dissensions qui apparaissent dans la société et la politique.
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Education and knowledge are sites of contest and conflict as well as they mirror tensions and fractions in society and politics, something that becomes also evident with the selection of these lectures and seminars/Ces enjeux sont particulièrement manifestes dans la sélection des photographies présentées à la galerie : Sande Cohen, Historiography, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, 11/22/1995; Griselda Pollock, Killing Men / Dying Women: Myth, Gesture and Sexual Difference in the 1950s, colloquium "fémininmasculin", Les Revues Parlées, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 2/2/1996; Zeinab Eyega, Female Circumcision , Female Genital Mutilation, A Health & Human Rights Issue for Girls and Women, Columbia University, New York 2/25/1997; Stuart Hall, Ethnicity, nation and race at the millennium, The Institute of Education, University of London, London, 7/1/1999; Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Aryeh Neier, Robert Rindler, Gilles Peress, Judith Friedlander, Documenting Genocide: Defining War Crimes, International Symposium on Military War Crimes: History and Memory, New School University, New York, 12/3/1999; Julia Bryan-Wilson, A Monument of Nuclear Warning, Places of Memory: Part 1, College Art Association, Hilton Hotel, New York, 2/24/2000; 3 photographs Pierre Bourdieu, Recherches récentes, Collège de France, Paris, 1/12/2000; Etienne Balibar, Outlines of a topography of cruelty, Columbia University, New York, 4/11/2000; Fredric Jameson, Modernity, Modernism and Late Modernism, UCLA, Los Angeles, 4/26/01; Rosalind Krauss, Bruce Nauman, Dia Art Foundation, New York, 5/23/2002; Daniel Barenboim, Edward Said, Music and Society, moderator, Michael Kimmelman, The New School, New York, 10/1/2002 and Klaus Theweleit, Playstation Cordoba/Yugoslavia/Afghanistan etc.- A war model, Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert Gallery, New York, 10/9/2002



View of the gallery exhibition, feb. 2003

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Homeland Security I – V 2003 video ; 10 min. - DVD ed. 10

View of the gallery exhibition, feb. 2003

*Homeland Security I – V, 2003, are short video segments that show the artist utter particular sentences in all the 11 languages he has been studying so far as part of his never-ending art practice that consists of learning foreign languages. The repetition of the same sentence across the register of different languages – including Arabic, his latest long term commitment next to Chinese - is questioning the very meaning of these sentences. This work makes reference to the newly created US department of Homeland Security, that is resembling some kind of a quasi-totalitarian big brother police administration as an answer to terrorism. The sentences are simple and express a degree of paranoia: "I am not a terrorist" (1), "I am not a religious fanatic" (2), "I don't give money to terrorist networks" (3), "I don't know how to build bombs" (4), and "I am not downloading dangerous information from the Internet". Homeland Security I – V*, 2003, sont de courts segments vidéos où l’artiste prononce quelques phrases dans les onze langues qu’il a étudié jusqu’à maintenant (l’arabe étant, après le chinois, la dernière entreprise linguistique de l’artiste). Rainer Ganahl poursuit en effet un projet de long terme, où l’apprentissage de langues étrangères constitue un axe majeur de sa pratique artistique. La répétition systématique des phrases dans les différentes langues vient interroger le sens même de ces déclarations. Ce travail fait référence au Département américain pour la sécurité du pays, récemment créé dans le but de répondre à la menace terroriste. Cette administration policière quasi-totalitaire ressemble étrangement à un Big brother. Ces phrases simples expriment un certain degré de paranoïa : "Je ne suis pas un terroriste" (1), "Je ne suis pas un fanatique religieux" (2), "Je ne donne pas d’argent aux réseaux terroristes" (3), "Je ne sais pas fabriquer de bombes" (4), et "Je ne télécharge pas d’informations dangeureuses sur internet".

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Next Target / Islam is a religion of peace, 2002 silk embroidery ; 80 x 105 cm. ; unique piece

Rainer Ganahl (A/USA) lives and works in New York City. His recent one person exhibitions include Baumgartner Gallery, New York 2002, Base, Florence, 2002; Baumgartner Gallery, New York 2001; Massimo de Carlo, Milan, 2001; Galerie Nächst St. Stephan, Vienna 2001; St. Lukas Stifting, Brussels 2001. He also represented Austria in 1999 at the Venice Biennial.