Highly fuelled
04/08/09
In the week Nottingham Contemporary parted its hoardings a fraction to enable passers by to glimpse the bespoke Caruso St. John art space under construction – the great and good of the city were also treated to the first of its window commissions with the work of US/German artist Josephine Meckseper. ‘american apparel’ in NC’s window is an installation of double stacked TVs, an airport-like conveyer belt and a triptych of suspended car tyres set against a background of mirrored tiles. Meckesper’s work in the past has often been presented at a street level setting and deals with the politics and the ideologies of the shop window by investigating the gallery space as a boutique. ‘american apparel’ continues this trend by mimicking a department store window display whilst also aping a museum vitrine or display case. 
Described by the organisation as 'an examination of the hidden violence behind seductive consumerist fantasies, especially within US car commercials’, the installation features the artists 6 minute video piece ‘0% Down’, from 2008, which she describes as “an illustration of the links between the car industry and oil.”
I went to see this film, screened separately to the installation, alongside a discussion with the artist and Nottingham Contemporary curator and director Alex Farquharson at Moot gallery in Sneinton, and its pounding, aggressive soundtrack of harsh car noises and industrial music samples filled the gallery space with a migraine inducing repetitive cacophony. This seemed to contrast strangely with the imagery of easily recognisable car brands, and yet one could see the 'editor’s cuts' made by the artist to were to show the burning and smoking of rubber and the revving of engines in order to evoke a more uneasily visceral and violent reading of these vehicles.
“I contacted a group of car companies and asked them to send me their current TV commercials. Saab, which is part of General Motors, had been running a campaign called "Born from Jets," where they used the connection between the way they make cars and their involvement in building military jets. Other carmakers show oil rigs or insert indirect references to 9/11 in their ads. It's devastatingly overt.” Excerpt from Interview with Liam Gillick, (‘Interview’ website, 2008)
Meckseper describes herself as an ‘artist and documenter’ but another role, which could be added to the list, is one of sampler in the hip-hop sense. The mix and match of historical references and contemporary imagery utilised by well known brands is evident in this piece through the selection of Boyd Rice’s industrial track “Total War” as a complete contrast to the jingly pop or roaring ballads usually associated with car commercials (think of the cliched Survivor ad classic 'Eye of the Tiger'...) This piece of experimental music was used as the soundtrack to ‘0% Down’, and selected for is appropriation of a a sample of Joseph Goebbel’s famous 1943 speech in which he asked Berliners ‘Do you want to go to war?’ It is a pity this jarring yet hypnotic noise cannot be heard by passers by to the window installation at Weekday Cross as it aids the observer in making links to the violent associations of the oil and car industries.
During the talk, Meckseper remarked on how the first theorists of propaganda referenced advertising in their writings and how she sees her work as an extension and re-examination of this. The subtlety of her message is extended through symbolism, the 3 suspended tyres in the installation represent the major car manufacturers in the United States. When Meckseper first wanted to examine this correlation between bombastic, war like imagery used in the commercials for cars, the US mindset at the time towards advertising reflected an overall ‘gung ho’ Bush-leaning attitude towards the economy and environment. When the film was being made, there were no obvious clues of the pending economic decline, and yet a new reading of ‘0% Down’ (which could be said to be something more than purely ‘documentary’) has superseded this ‘snapshot’ in light of the reality of bankruptcies of General Motors and its subsidiary, Saab.
The broken mirror tiles in the window at NC were (rather conveniently) described as a way for the public to imagine ‘the very moment in time when the window gets smashed in protest’. The shards of reflective glass certainly evoke an image of provoked anger, as one may have witnessed after the attack of a suffragette’s brick or terrorist’s nail bomb.
Stylistically, this piece along with the body of her recent work which utilises photography and film, has evident links to pioneering female artists unafraid to tackle political topics – from the obvious billboard aesthetic of Barbara Krueger one can make parallels in interests of how advertising is used to manipulate; and in featuring slightly uneasy and awkward yet elegant models one could be forgiven for mistaking Meckseper’s photographic work for that of Vanessa Beecroft. The use of shop windows, glass and mirrored surfaces, and the formal and minimalistic arrangements of consumerist products in a museological display sits visually on the same ‘masculine’ shelf as earlier artists work such as Claes Oldenburg, Paul Thek and of course the shiny Jeff Koons. In her public interview at Moot, Meckseper was woeful about the lack of critical discourse surrounding artists working with political issues in the US today. “(They) seem to hold up the artist as a genius, leaving a serious lack of critical stance on the work.”
Although Meckseper was very clear that she was not attempting to peddle one particular political agenda, the appropriation and incorporation of political issues and fuelled symbols, allows the work to be read via multiple entry points. This work is evidently more deeply ensconced in subtle activist leanings as apposed to a mere aestheticisation of an ‘issue’. This became evident when hearing about the artists’ activist/DIY background as a teenager in 1990’s Germany when it was the norm in her peer group to attend demonstrations and protests. Her background in radical politics is unsurprising when one learns of her parentage too. Her father is ‘anarchist’ artist Freidreich Meckseper and her mother is an elected politician for the Green Party in Germany. Meckseper herself spoke of how as a student, the conscious decision to make an activist message from an artwork was not necessarily the driving force behind her practice. But when the Rodney King riots in California were occurring, it make sense to document it seeing as it was on her doorstep. When questioned about earlier unpublished manifestos created in the style of early avant guard artists, she made the process sound more like a practical ‘to do’ list rather than a manual for social disobedience.
The installation in the window is confusing yet intriguing, and like the two-way mirrored structures of Dan Graham provide a window back on to the audience itself, ‘american apparel’ is certainly prompts interaction from shoppers in town walking through the Lace Market. Of those who pause to read the wall text and watch the flickering melange of advertising images upon the screens, I’m not sure how many people will make the correlation between the car industry and the world’s contentious use of oil as the artist intended. In a city full of new buildings to let with empty shop fronts amongst older stores’ vibrant “SALE” signs, this work is certainly a document of the current economic situation and relevant to consumers and car drivers the world over.
