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Resources for Viewers and Educators
This Land is Your Land
February 1-March 22, 2008
Featuring works by: Roberto Bellini, Peter Granser, Caroline Hake, Christian Jankowski, Simon Roberts, Greg Stimac, and Bryan Zanisnik
Peter Granser, Man With Flag, 2006
This resource packet was produced as a viewer supplement to the exhibition This Land is Your Land by Corinne Rose, Manager of Education. To schedule a free docent-led exhibition tour, please contact Corinne at (312) 344-7793 or at crose@colum.edu.
The exhibitions, presentations, and related programs of the MoCP are sponsored in part by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; The Mayer and Morris Kaplan Family Foundation; the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts: the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs/After School Matters; American Airlines, the official airlines of the MoCP, and our members. This exhibition has been supported in part by the Austrian Consulate General.
The events of 9/11 sparked many and various expressions of patriotism in the United States. Outraged by the terrorist attacks, many Americans sought retribution, a yearning that helped make way for the ongoing war in Iraq. As the war has unraveled, for many Americans US conduct has become morally suspect, patriotism increasingly abstract, and our national identity fragmented—compromising a sense of national pride. In this election year, patriotism also is coloring political debate over immigration, national security, health care, religion, and economics. While these polarizing issues heighten our awareness of the impossibility of either a fixed national identity or collective unwavering pride, they also raise the idea that fissures in a common devotion to country might indicate patriotism in a higher form—the questioning of one’s country in a desire to make it better.
“This Land Is Your Land, This Land is My Land,” comes from a song written by Woodie Guthrie in 1940, in response to what he felt was the overzealous glorification of the country in the lyrics of Irving Berlin’s song, God Bless America,” released in 1938 and wildly popular. Guthrie, who had grown up in a farming family in Oklahoma, was reacting to what he believed was a disconnect between the exalted adoration of country in Berlin’s song and the reality of social and economic problems that produced the Great Depression and were then amplified by it. Sixty-seven years later, “This Land is Your Land,” has become one of the most popular patriotic songs of all time. Its call for egalitarianism and its ambiguously ironic lyrics about the grandeur of the American landscape have allowed this originally populist left-wing song to be fully co-opted by the American mainstream and turned into a well-loved patriotic anthem.
The seven artists in this exhibition—two are American, five are not—offer diverse perceptions of the United States and illuminate the differences between blind patriotism and national celebration based on knowledge. Their artwork refers to some of the most current American concerns as well as some of our most enduring national stereotypes. Often with humor, they use current events and personal observations to comment on the political, religious, and cultural climate of the United States today. In their work they demonstrate that our nation’s character is not homogeneously tribal, but rather a constantly shifting confluence of traditions, stereotypes, and opinions, as seen from within this country and without.
-Karen Irvine, Curator
About the Artists
Peter Granser (Austrian, b. 1970)
Peter Granser went straight to the heart of conservative politics, Christian fundamentalism, immigration tensions, and big oil interests when he traveled through Texas in 2006 and 2007 to create his series of photographs, Signs. In this work Granser focuses on visual symptoms of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, extreme religion, conservative politics, and zealous patriotism in an effort to, in his own words, “lay bare the state of the (conservative) American soul.” In the process he raises provoking questions about the nature of national identity, the role of photography in shaping such identity, and what it means to collect photographic documentation of pre-existing biases. Granser provides us with evidence of some of the most unflattering, stereotypical aspects of American identity. Provocatively, this direct strategy illuminates the fact that stereotypes, like photographs, are based in truth, but both are also exaggerated and by their very nature ambiguous and incomplete.
Peter Granser is self-taught in photography and has worked as a photojournalist since the mid 1990s. He has won numerous grants and awards for his photography, including several from World Press Photo and the Discovery Award from the Rencontres d’Arles Photography Festival (2003). His work has been exhibited in venues throughout the world including the Kunsthalle, Germany; Belfast Exposed Photography, Northern Ireland; and Photo Espana, Spain.
Christian Jankowski (German, b. 1968)
Christian Jankowski collaborated with a televangelist he met in Texas named Peter Spencer to create this video, which was inspired by the question, “what makes a work of art holy?” At the beginning of the work, Jankowski approaches the stage at the start of a mass, pretends to faint, and lies at Spencer’s feet while Spencer delivers a sermon about art and its relationship to God. As Jankowski relinquishes control of the piece to Spencer and the church’s television cameras, there is a tension between the ironic humor that comes out of the unusual topic of the sermon and Spencer’s impressive and captivating delivery. Ultimately, Jankowski is interested, as he puts it, in “setting a situation in motion,” explaining that, “the most interesting things happen when you manage to overlap different contexts and transform them, while keeping them exactly as they were.”
Throughout his career, Christian Jankowski has created photography, video and installation works that result from scenarios that he instigates with collaborators including a psychotherapist, fortune teller and customs agent, and allows to play out. Blurring the lines between art and the real world, Jankowski calls into question the role of the artist and the nature of art while also drawing the viewer into a dialogue on current social and cultural issues. Christian Jankowski was educated at the Academy of Fine Arts, Hamburg, Germany. His work has been widely exhibited at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial (2002), NY; the Berlin Biennale, Germany (2001); and the Venice Biennale (1999).
Roberto Bellini (Brazilian, b. 1979)
In this video, Roberto Bellini addresses the extent to which we have lived in a climate of fear since 9/11. With the goal of simply filming the landscape at sunset, Bellini set up his camera in a parking lot in Austin Texas. He was soon approached by a security guard who explained, unaware that the camera was recording, that taking pictures in the parking lot, or of any of the buildings or infrastructure nearby, is forbidden. No one mentions 9/11, but it is the obvious reason for such extreme regulation, in a world where even photography, very often a tool of security, has become threatening. Bellini has said that he is most fulfilled when his audience “reads beyond North America’s specific situation and re-assesses just how fragile some basic freedoms are.”
Roberto Bellini holds BA in Drawing from the School of Fine Arts, at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil and is currently finishing his MFA in Transmedia at the University of Texas at Austin. He has participated in several exhibitions and international video festivals including Videobrasil (2006), and the Kunst Film Biennale (2007), Germany.
Bryan Zanisnik (American, b. 1979)
“These videos are an examination of violence and revisionist American History seen both through my eyes and the eyes of my eighty-year-old Grandmother.” -Bryan Zanisnik
In Family Reunion, Bryan Zanisnik uses footage culled from films he made when he was thirteen years old, in which he asked his family members to play various parts. Fourteen years later while in art school, Zanisnik took the film footage from his archive and re-edited it into satirical, oddball works that distill issues that remain significant today. In Family Album, his grandmother plays the part of a revenge-seeking Mafioso murderer, interested in giving Americans a “bad day,” all the while fearing the immigration police.
In his video work, still photography and performances, Brian Zanisnik mines personal history and his relationships with his family to reflect on broader socio-political issues including interpersonal communication, masculine identity, and violence. For recent works, Zanisnik researched, examined, and created performances based on a family legend involving his great-grandfather who was said to have wrestled and killed a wolf in his native Ukraine to save the children of the Czar. Zanisnik was born and raised in New Jersey and now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He holds a BA in Art History from Drew University, NJ and is an MFA candidate in Combined Media at Hunter College New York. His work has been exhibited at institutions including the museum of Fine Arts, Florida State University; Exit Art, New York; and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, New York. In 2007, he was awarded an Art Omi International Artists Residency.
Simon Roberts (British, b. 1974)
In 1999 Simon Roberts attended and documented an illegal gathering of pyrotechnics enthusiasts called “Desert Blast” in the Nevada desert. Held in a secret location and attended primarily by scientists and people with military and movie backgrounds, the event’s main activities included the detonation of machine guns, and explosions of shells and fireballs that reach up to three hundred feet in the air, flame-throwers, and high powered, high altitude rockets. In an interview, Bob Lazar, the founder of Desert Blast, once described the gathering as “our rebel breakaway from all the government agencies and professionals who have neutered the fun of fireworks; it’s our freedom-loving release.” Eventually the proceedings were reported to law enforcement agents and the event was cancelled. In 2002, Desert Blast was re-instated as Winter Blast, this time officially sanctioned by the Lake Havasu, Arizona mayor. The event, however, was much tamer than Desert Blast, and with a section called “American Heroes,” in which voice-overs of President Bush speaking about 9/11 were set against a fireworks display, obviously organized to be a patriotic rallying cry in support of the war in Iraq. Together, these two series speak to the tension between the idea of American freedom and the conservative, regulated society in which we live. Ironically, Roberts observes, in Lake Havasu, “although you may legally walk into a gun store and buy a .357 magnum, you cannot buy, own, or light as much as a sparkler.”
Working for publications including the Sunday Times Magazine, the Guardian Weekend (UK) and Time and Esquire Magazines. Simon Roberts has photographed the landscapes and people of countries including Russia, Ukraine, the United States, Zimbabwe, Israel and Palestine, commenting on current social and cultural issues. His work has been widely exhibited and has won numerous awards including as one of Photo District News’ emerging artists under thirty; a Getty Grant on Editorial Photography (2006) and the Bright Spark Award from the Magenta Foundation, Toronto (2006). His first monograph, Motherland, made during a year-long journey through Russia, was published in 2007. Roberts holds a BA in Human Geography from The University of Sheffield, UK, and a Distinction in Photography from the National Council for the Training of Journalists, UK.
Greg Stimac (American, b. 1976)
Greg Stimac’s video of cars peeling out of various locations speaks to a vague and general American bravado, as well as to our identity as a nation of gas guzzlers, dangerously dependent on oil. As the video progresses, the cars, license plates and landscapes change, but the inane macho activity stays consistent, hinting that any homogeneity in American culture exists mostly at a superficial, attention-getting level. Stimac’s second video, Car Wash, Chewelah, Washington, addresses American superficiality as an attractive young woman cheerily promotes a car wash out of view. Stimac came across the scene while traveling through the area and stopped and asked the woman if she would mind if he filmed her. She said yes but was not aware that he had begun recording as Stimac sat, smoked a cigarette and let the camera run.
Like Greg Stimac’s videos on view, his earlier and ongoing series of still photographs consider the motivations and meanings behind American pastimes, rituals, and behaviors such as building snowmen, constructing roadside shrines, mowing the lawn and shooting guns. Stimac holds a BFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago. His work has been exhibited at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Aqua Art, Miami; Studio Bee, Tokyo and will be shown in the upcoming exhibition, Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN (2008).
Caroline Hake (German, b. 1968)
Caroline Hake photographed various locations in Los Angeles in search of some of the more theatrical and artificial aspects of American culture. Visiting sites of entertainment and recreation, such as television sets and museums, Hake set out to make images that dissolve the divide between the real and the fictional, and that also allude to unfulfilled longings on both a personal and societal level. In this light, a photograph of the Miss World stage speaks of potentially unrealized dreams and a desire for public approval, the beam station from the television series Star Trek of escape to a fantasy world, and a picture of a model of Hollywood that visitors walk on top of, making them feel colossal and perhaps invincible, are all fitting metaphors for our country’s recent presence on the world stage.
Caroline Hake produced the work on view during a 2002 residence in Los Angeles funded by a DAAD grant. Her work has been shown in venues including, Gallery b2, Leipzig, and Photoforum Innsbruck. Hake studied at the Studio for Graphic and Book Arts, Leipzig (1995-2000).
Questions for Looking and Discussion
1. Discuss each artist’s style.
* What ideas does he or she explore in the body of work on view?
* If the artist works in a series, what do the images have in common?
* What can you tell about how each artist made his or her work? Consider composition and framing; presentation including use of color and the scale of the work; and how the work is mounted or framed. In the video works consider also the use of sound and motion and how the work was edited. What else do you notice about how the work was created?
* How do these technical and aesthetic choices influence the content or meaning of the work?
2. What symbols of national identity do you see in each body of work?
* What types of places and activities do you see?
* What words—written, or in the case of the video pieces, spoken—catch your attention in the works on view?
* What do these symbols, activities, places and words reveal about current American concerns and values?
3. Does any of the work on view seem to reflect a political or cultural bias on the part of the artist? Explain. Does any of the work reveal personal information about the artist? Describe.
4. Does any of the work seem to reflect stereotypes of America in general, or of certain regions or groups of people? Might any of the work challenge stereotypes? How?
5. Of the seven artists whose work is on view, only Bryan Zanisnik and Greg Stimac are American.
* Do you think this influences their treatment of the subject matter? If so, how?
* In what ways do you think that an artist’s status as an insider or an outsider to the community they are photographing might affect his or her portrayal of their subject?