Places: The Environment

"Representation [of the continents] is no longer enough; we now have the projection of something as uncertain as our own existence."¹

The artist strives to create meaning, but also to struggle against what is wrong in the world. Rather than approach this struggle in a directly educational or an overtly political mode, artists in the D.Daskalopoulos collection use indirect and metaphorical approaches. In his collecting activities, Daskalopoulos says that he deliberately tries "to avoid political art." "The political is very connected to a specific historical context and specific issues. . . . I focus on how [the artworks I collect] relate to the human essence in a more universal way."² Many of the artists have addressed the conflicts surrounding the planet's natural resources through an exploration of wars, science, or economics.

Rivane Neuenschwander (b. 1967, Belo Horizonte, Brazil) is interested in how human beings and other living creatures interact with one another and their environments. In her video, Contingent (Contingente, 2008), a map of the world made from honey is devoured by ants. Over the course of more than ten minutes, the continents shrink until they are gone altogether, raising the question, by analogy, of how humans are consuming the world's limited natural resources. Neuenschwander has said that she likes the symbolic quality of ants: "They have been present in almost every continent for thousands of years, long before us."³ The map also serves as a rich symbol. It is projected to the size of a classroom map, but one that asks to teach us about how we interact with our environment. Neuenschwander says she named the video Contingent because the word had multiple possible meanings. She likes the fact that "contingent" is similar to the word "continent," "or rather, these two words are very close in their pronunciation and spelling. . . . This interests me—the creation of a certain confusion, a rereading of the word, a delay of its meaning."⁴

Notes

¹ Rivane Neuenschwander, quoted in Susan Thompson entry on Neuenschwander, in The Luminous Interval: The D.Daskalopoulos Collection, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, exh. cat. (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2011), p. 161.

² Dimitris Daskalopoulos, in "Curating Rooms in My Head: Dimitris Daskalopoulos in Conversation with Nancy Spector," in The Luminous Interval, p. 25.

³ Neuenschwander in The Luminous Interval, p. 161.

⁴ Ibid.

• Look together at two video stills from Rivane Neuenschwander’s Contingent (Contingente, 2008). What do students notice about the stills?
• Tell students the video is 10 minutes, 30 seconds long, and that the first still comes from earlier on than the second. Knowing that, ask them what they think might be happening in the video? The full video can be found on YouTube .
  For this piece, Neuenschwander constructed a map of the world out of honey and then released a colony of ants onto it. Ask students to think about the potential symbolism behind the artwork. Make sure they explore the associations they might have with ants, maps, and honey.
• Neuenschwander says she named the video Contingent because the word has multiple meanings. Ask students if they know the definition of the word “contingent.” Then ask them to explore its meaning as applied to the video.
• Neuenschwander has said that she likes the fact that “contingent” is similar to the word “continent,” “or rather, these two words are very close in their pronunciation and spelling. . . . This interests me—the creation of a certain confusion, a rereading of the word, a delay of its meaning.” ¹ Ask students what they think she means by this statement. Why would she want to create confusion rather than being as clear as possible?
• Tell students about how all of artworks on view are part of the collection of Dimitris Daskalopoulos, who says he deliberately tries “to avoid political art” in his collection. He says: “The political is very connected to a specific historical context and specific issues…I focus on how [the artists I collect] relate to the human essence in a more universal way.”² Ask students to debate this point in relation to the artists they have seen. Do they think the work of Neuenschwander qualifies as “political art”? Why or why not?

Notes:

¹ Rivane Neuenschwander, quoted in Susan Thompson entry on Neuenschwander, in The Luminous Interval: The D.Daskalopoulos Collection, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, exh. cat. (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2011), p. 161.

² Dimitris Daskalopoulos, in “Curating Rooms in My Head: Dimitris Daskalopoulos in Conversation with Nancy Spector,” in The Luminous Interval, p. 25.