Throughout the media circus that is our election season, few have thought to query: but what do the Dutch think? Luckily,Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei and Jonas Staal have been in residence at InCUBATE here in Chicago working steadily on The Barack Obama Project. Their work hones in on the marketing of racial identity as a key aspect of this election season. It’s a significant, if usually unaddressed issue, as evidenced by this statement by Obama’s senior political adviser David Axelrod on the cover of the New York Times yesterday: “I think there is a general inclination on the part of the older voters to vote for what is more familiar . . . Here’s a guy named Barack Obama, an African-American guy, relatively new. That’s a lot of change.”

Read the whole interview: http://antiadvertisingagency.com/news/true-colors#more-512

Chicago, IL – Project space InCUBATE (Institute for Understanding Between Art and The Everyday), located in Chicago, presents a series of exhibitions, performances and lectures by three Dutch artists, Vincent W.J van Gerven Oei, Katinka Simonse and Jonas Staal. Together they form the artgroup EMPATHY.

EMPATHY focuses on the ‘market surrounding empathy’. They analyse the use of empathy as one of the most important products in today’s exchange of goods, taking place on both the level of commodity and morality of consumption. By their use of public interventions, pamphlets, exhibitions and lectures, the group became known by a growing audience in The Netherlands. Exhibitions and symposiums like the ‘US Army Torture Devices’ (Masters Gallery, Amsterdam - 2007) and ‘Al-Qa’ida Torture Devices’ (Roodkapje Gallery, Rotterdam - 2007) by Van Gerven Oei and Staal, opened up discussion on a broader scale on the ‘export of democracy’ and the involvement of the Dutch government in this practice. The diptych provided an analysis of different social/economical phenomena within democracy that can be recontextualized as torturing methods, both in Guantánamo Bay and Iraq. Other known events, such as the ‘Save the Pets I’ (Platform 21 Gallery, Amsterdam - 2007) and ‘Save the Pets II’ (Masters Gallery, Amsterdam - 2008), happenings by Simonse, directly confronted audiences with the mass killing of male chicks and the excesses of the pet entertainment industry, among others by presenting one hundred hamsters running around the exhibition space in neon coloured plastic balls.

During the month of April, EMPATHY has implemented its public practices in the city of Chicago, continuing their investigation which clearly balances on the edge of artistic and theoretical practice, and the use of strategies rooted in politics and activism.

In the public performance ‘Her name is Sarah’ by Katinka Simonse, the artist-designer takes a dead dog dressed in pink clothing named Sarah for a walk in downtown Chicago. When asked what she is doing while dragging the animal over the streets, she consequently answers by saying ‘Her name is Sarah’.
The performance undoubtably refers to the meaning of the animal within upper (middle) circles, in which much more then a living being, the animal is used as a commodity article: as part of an individuals carefully build image and ego, rather then being acknowledged as a being with own needs and characteristics. The oblivious character of the ‘answer’ that she provides her public with in this work, relates to the detached, fully commercially appropriated significance of animals in our present society.

Simonse performs by her alter-ego ‘TINKEBELL.’, a lady completely dressed in pink, referring to a completely innocent, sweet, naive girl, inflicting these symbols of friendlyness with acts of a violent nature. It is not only the performance itself that generates a reaction of shock, but especially the lines of text spoken by her alter ego 'TINKEBELL., for not only is the act of walking a dead dressed dog shamelessly executed, within the act itself, this is above all not acknowledged as such.

At the manifestation VERSION08 / Dark Matter, Simonse will present Sarah within an appropriate living room setting featuring the documentation video of the performance ‘Her name is Sarah’.

In the installation, intervention and lecture series ‘The Barack Obama Project’ by Vincent van Gerven Oei and Jonas Staal, the artists investigate the role of photograpic representation within the Democratic race for the presidential candidature. The political dimension of the photographic representation has become poignant in the candidates’ efforts to obtain the nominations from their party, generating excesses like the controversy concerning the print of a photo of Obama by Clinton’s campaign, presumably showing him ‘more black’ then he actually is.

These issues raise fundamental questions on the standards maintained in the discussion on race and its representation in a mediated environment. The ten-step gray scale that was standardized during the early stages of black and white photography for example, was based on pure light and pure darkness at both ends of the scale and the the color of a white male’s palm as the ‘neutral’ centre point. Since all photographic technology that has been developed since was based on this practical, apparently scientifically ordened scale, it is would be theoretically impossible to create a representative photograph of a black man. Thus, even on the most fundamental level, photography as a technique is not neutral.

At the VERSION08 / Dark Matter art manifestation, Van Gerven Oei en Staal elaborate on these issues presenting the first stage of their investigation, entitled ‘The Barack Obama Project / A More Perfect Union – Study’: A video with one thousand continuously merging skin fragments taken from photographs of Obama, buttons showing the Obama campaign logo placed on 250 skin fragment buttons of Obama and a light box presentation, accompagnied by the soundtrack of Obama’s ‘A More Perfect Union’ speech, form the basis of the different actions planned, among which an intervention in the Obama volunteering headquarters in Chicago.

Van Gerven Oei and Staal raise a disturbing question that has to be faced in the current discussion surrounding the ‘race-issue’: even though Obama is literally represented in a grand variety of differentiated aspects, still a choice has been made, a choice to pick one thousand apparently random photographs, a choice to pick a apparently random square selection of the photograph, a choice to compose, organize the selection in an apparently random composition. It is this choice that, in itself, can not be included in any 'objective' representation. A comparable choice is presented in a recent remark that was noted from an Obama event coordinator, organising the audience behind the main speaker, Obama's wife, saying: "Get me more white people, we need more white people", in order to balance the amount of African-Americans in the audience. The representation of unity, in this respect, entails including, excluding, adding or substracting individuals according to the same characteristics that have to be canceled out in the main picture.

The exhibition Al-Qa'ida Torture Devices comprises a presentation of a selection of typical western household appliances, tools and other instruments, such as electric irons, drills and cutting torches, which Al-Qa'ida has been using as torture devices on captives.

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Het markeren van de tegenstelling binnen het fundament onder het Nederlandse rechtsysteem door enerzijds met het Artikel 1 mee te schrijven (door deze te volgen) en anderzijds de onmogelijkheid van een consequente doorvoering van die wet (door het provisorisch en tijdelijk dichtplamuren van de tekst) te duiden.

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PERSBERICHT
De performance van "EMPATHY(tm) Intervention #2: Plastering the Dutch
Constitution (Art.1)" werd vandaag om 11 uur op de Hofplaats te Den
Haag door beeldend kunstenaar en mede-oprichter van het EMPATHY(tm)
team Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei uitgevoerd

De performance bestond uit het dichtplamuren van de tekst van Artikel
1 van de Grondwet die gefreesd is in het monument voor de Grondwet
(ook wel de Zitbank) op de Hofplaats, van de hand van architect Pi
de Bruijn. In het pamflet dat de performance begeleidt staat de
performance als volgt omschreven:

"Het markeren van de tegenstelling binnen het fundament onder het
Nederlandse rechtsysteem door enerzijds met het Artikel 1 mee te
schrijven (door deze te volgen) en anderzijds de onmogelijkheid van
een consequente doorvoering van die wet (door het provisorisch en
tijdelijk dichtplamuren van de tekst) te duiden."

EMPATHY(tm) voerde eerder de performance "EMPATHY(tm) Intervention #1:
Fight for Public Space!" waarbij een tentoonstelling van
verschillende foto's van de hand Marco Eschler werd geclaimd als de
visualisatie van de 'markt rond empathie'. De documentatie van
"EMPATHY(tm) Intervention #2: Plastering the Dutch Constitution (Art.
1)" zal vanaf 7 september worden gepresenteerd tijdens de
tentoonstelling 'Post Dordt' in het CBK Rotterdam.