Skulptur Projecke Münster 2017

I think the Munster Skulptur Projekt might be my favourite international art event. A deeply thoughtful, once-a-decade, whole-of-city sculpture project that began in 1977, it refreshes a curiosity about public art and public space and a critical lens, whichever direction you look (“is that a park bench or is that a sculpture?”) as you treasure hunt your way all over the city on foot and by bike.

Seminal works from earlier iterations - Claes Oldenberg, Bruce Nauman, Dan Graham, Rosemarie Trockel, Ilya Kabakov - remain dotted across the city in this gradual accumulation of permanent incursions in the cityscape, with temporary works turning up in lakes, Asian grocers, community gardens and tattoo parlours.

I was lucky enough to come 10 years ago and so it’s a fascinating benchmark of your own life as well over a 10 year period - remembering who I was and how I felt at 27 and how it feels to be here, now 37. Wondering if I’ll get to come again when I’m 47.

I’ve spent the last few days riding all over the city and for better or worse, these are just some of the works that have lingered in my memory.

Mika Rottenberg, Cosmic Generator, 2017

Mika Rottenburg’s work perplexes me – in a knotty, compelling, deeply absorbing way. It resists a didactic translation – all you have to work with is slippery associations, surreal visuals and moments of strange humour – but if you give into it, a narrative does emerge and it is unsettling. There are things said about borders, about food and conspicuous consumption, labour, value and globalisation. The film element of Cosmic Generator is like a deep dive into the bowels of someone who garnished their tacos with some LSD. It explores an underworld – literally and intellectually – of mass production. People dressed as tacos and archetypal businessmen crawl through tunnels, towards or away from what we don’t know. Strange details punctuate throughout – the gaudy painting on the wall of the Chinese restaurant comes to life and the Ibis shits a golden egg while the deer vomits hi-vis yellow.

The camera pans through the shop-room after shop-room where bored Asian women are illuminated and/or buried in inflatables, fake flowers, lights and tinsel. It’s gloriously weird and the scenes are punctuated by close-ups of the smashing of coloured lightbulbs. To get to this 20-minute film, you have to enter through an otherwise-ordinary, though not abundantly stocked, Asian supermarket that carries elephant ceramics and blow-up pineapple tubes and tinsel and a faint sense of despair. It’s a useful framework and in moving through the store to the backroom that hosts the films you become an unwitting part of this whole transaction. And the bare shelves and unkempt store only heighten the gaudy excess of the film’s shop interiors. As a whole work/experience, it stays with you, even as you plough through countless other works in the course of the Project – wrestling to draw together all of your impressions and responses.

Aram Bartholl, 5V, 2017

I have to admit that my initial impression – based only on an image of the work – was that Aram Bartholl’s 5V was a strange affectation. So I’m glad I read about it before experiencing it. Despite the obvious technical expertise required to create the work – a campfire-generated phone charger – there is something staggeringly simple, elegant and poetic even, about Bartholl’s work. Connecting the world’s oldest innovation – fire – with its newest – the Internet and mobile communication, Bartholl challenges us to reimagine or remember communication as a space and encounter and as a consequence of community coming together around a fire; not as a series of tweets, texts or emojis. As a measure of how far we’ve departed from this old form of coming together and communicating, it was fascinating, and sad, to observe my own hesitation and quiet fear about approaching the work and having to talk even to the MSP invigilator. Though the smell of an open fire is so instantly familiar and comforting. I wasn’t expecting to like Bartholl’s work so I’m thrilled that it surprised me the way that it did because I really loved it.

Ayşe Erkmen, On Water, 2017

Ayşe Erkmen’s On Water is a treat, especially after several thankless kilometres biking through the industrial outskirts of Munster. A submerged pedestrian bridge that connects two sides of a large canal, visitors can cross the bridge and stroll from one side to the other and from a distance you appear as if walking on water, hence the title. Several things struck me while making my way across the back across.

The first, a sense of despondency that a risk-averse city like Sydney would never allow such a thing – no guard rails, no excess of life flotation devices, no lifeguards – and the second, a sense of possibility – to entertain the idea of what might happen if you did step off – that nanosecond where you did stand on water before plunging into the cold and rather unappealing canal – the risk and the folly and the faith. It was a brief, if intoxicating thought. The two sides of the canal are actually quite different – one very industrial, the other gentrified with a boardwalk and bars – so the incentive to cross and explore the other side is little to none, otherwise – and yet, historically, I imagine they worked in simpatico. My only criticism, if it could even be called that, was the deep and uncomfortable impression of the steel mesh bridge underfoot. Not even the cold refresh of water on red hot tired feet could distract from the pain. But perhaps with the temptation to step off and walk out onto the water being right there, a constant reminder of keeping your feet somewhere solid is no bad thing.

Pierre Huyghe, After Alive Ahead, 2017

Pierre Huyghe’s After Alive Ahead has been receiving countless plaudits but I can’t help but wonder if this is the art world illuminati overcompensating for the fact that Huyghe’s strange, abandoned environment in the old Munster ice-rink is beyond their grasp. Because it was certainly beyond mine.

Past encounters with Huyghe’s work have been highly memorable – his Frieze Projects aquarium in 2011, where a lobster took up residence in the skull of a Brancusi bronze sculpture; even his wonderfully bizarre environment at 2012 documenta – with its pink-legged dog and hive of bees-as-beard on a reclining marble statue, all in the wilderness surrounding Kassel’s lake. But After Alive Ahead felt disjointed and as empty as the part-excavated rink. Apparently there were peacocks who were meant to inhabit the space, but they became too traumatised and had to be removed. The connections between the absent birds, the crater-like surface of the rink, all muddy puddles and lumpen stalactites, and the illuminated fish tank at the centre were resolutely unclear and the introduction of an app, which projected hovering black pyramids on a camera screen was baffling. It seemed to promise a narrative – or at least a navigation of the space in some way – but I was left feeling like I was either not using it properly or using it properly and completely missing the point.

The whole experience, instead of feeling organically weird, felt stymied and staccatoed. Apparently an exploration of ecosystems, cell reproduction and cancer growth, After Alive Ahead ultimately felt overthought and a bit contrived. It made for a disappointing, unmemorable experience.