FEATURE JOHN BOCK
above: Klütterkammer, 2004 (installation view, ICA, London).
Courtesy Klosterfelde, Berlin, Anton Kern, New York, and Giò Marconi, Milan
facing page: Something stressful about a woman’s curves, 2007, steel chair, wire, wood, string,
136 x 57 x 37 cm. Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
Kurt Schwitters, and his desire to unearth the essence of the utterance while presenting the illusion of complete spontaneity. Particularly in
beyond conventions of language and meaning, were typically utopian the earlier videoed performances, this, along with the confined spaces
of the era. Bock points out that he is not unconditionally appropriating in which the performances take place, creates a potent voyeuristic
an outmoded and short-lived gestalt, or even incorporating intact intensity.
quotations, as he and Ball are in entirely different intellectual, economic Talking about his recent decision to concentrate on filmmaking
and social circumstances, and yet there are points on which they rather than live performance, Bock describes the difficulty of performing
converge. The total artwork persists to an extent in Bock’s practice, at large art fairs and biennials, where the general hullabaloo detracts
as he collages images and ideas from across the board of archetypes, from any possibility of a concentrated viewing experience. He likes to
genres, atavisms and mythology, both ancient and modern (he refers manipulate the audience, forcing them to stoop down or clamber along
to economics as the mythology of the twentieth century, arguing a passage to earn the screening. In Klütterkammer (2004) at the ICA,
that it is as fictional, variegated and contingent as the classical myths). London, for instance, the eccentric installation/group exhibition brought
Such fusions of fact and fiction, invention and quotation, are intended work by Sarah Lucas, Paul Thek, Sigmar Polke and other artists admired
to ‘catch’ the audience, to snare them on moments of recognition. by Bock, or occupying a place in his art-historical lineage, together with
Science-fiction motifs, from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey such ‘artefacts’ as Rasputin’s fingernails (a metafictional fabrication)
(1968) in particular, recur, as do ridiculous conglomerations of pseudo- and his own videos, which where installed so that viewers had to sit in a
scientific and economic terminology. We see the helmeted face of bathtub or crawl through splintering wood to view them. In contrast to
Kubrik’s Dr Dave Bowman as he appears to encounter the rabbit this, the framing and installation of Dandy was oddly cursory. At Sadie
in Bock’s Gast, for example, and in Skipholt we might recognise an Coles HQ, the artist’s motorcycle and some improbable fabric/woollen
element from Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) in a squid-like thing with plastic sculptures were arranged inertly in the space next door, whereas the
cups for a body, which Bock uses just like the bolts tied with bandages appearance within the film of his sculptural contraptions, made from
that the stalker employs to navigate the gravitational anomalies in off-cuts, vegetables, wire and unidentifiable stuff, seems much more
the Zone. suitable, retaining their centrality and vitality as interactive objects.
Bock’s interdisciplinary approach to film and performance seems Bock says that these days he is more interested in architecture
a salute to Ball’s unconstrained methodologies and the Bauhaus’s than anything else, although it is difficult to say how this manifests itself.
fusion of forms, from theatre to design. Erdmann (2003) – an abject Perhaps it foretells the further use of heritage locations, or explains
puppet show conducted in a shed and tunnel, viewed as a live video why his previous choppy editing style, put to such brilliant effect in the
feed by the audience outside – incorporates live and recorded modes frenetic and low-down, dirty Boxer (2002), has extended into longer
of making, melding theatrical, filmic and painterly concerns. Its narrative connective narrative passages. But then again it’s probably not a
construction, too, is heterogeneous, part storyboarded, part made-up good idea to impose too much sense on such claims. Although Bock’s
on the hoof. Of a film treatment that is, say, 30 pages long, only three or flitting between forms and genre is not couched in such stringent
so words are learned from each page, so that the main concept of the political terms as those of the early-twentieth-century avant-garde, it
narrative is understood by Bock and the professional actors he works is underpinned by a similar ideology. He persists in finding what he calls
with, but no one ever quite achieves the state of ‘acting’. As with most the ‘glam’, asking us to look, look again and look harder at the latent
improvisation, the skill lies not in perpetually inventing everything from fascination of the universe.
scratch, but devising routes through spaces and ways of interacting
with sculptures, developing personal tics and word combinations and John Bock: Films is on show at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, from
planning tactics for getting from one narrative point to another, all 7 June to 23 September
five.linnine.lin ARTREVIEW
p 52-59 John Bock AR May07.indd 9 4/4/07 21:59:58
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