En la sección de literatura de esta semana no hablamos solo de literatura y esto se debe a que esta vez contamos con la ayuda de consonni. Como ya explicamos en su primera colaboración, además de ser una editorial dedicada a la cultura crítica y con un espacio propio e independiente en el barrio San Francisco de Bilbo, consonni es también una cómplice en las ondas, ya que cuenta con un proyecto radiofónico a través del que sigue contagiando ese punto de vista crítico. De hecho, entre otros, es de sus nuevos programas de radio de lo que hablamos con María Mur, directora de consonni, que nos trae una lista cargada de novedades. [...]

(...) Las actuaciones dentro del campo de la documentación comienzan con la inauguración de una serie de blog en la página de arteleku.net. También se procederá a presentar el archivo Consonni, con la documentación del conjunto de obras
coproducidas por esta empresa bilbaína y Arteleku entre 1997 y 2004, y en el que se encuentran diaporamas, audios, vídeos, fotografías y textos (...)

(...) consonni depositó en Arteleku un archivo que agrupa una amplia selección de obras producidas entre 1997 y 2004. En este registro 'de lo visible e invisible' se ha priorizado para su conservación las iniciativas en las que Arteleku ha intervenido como coproductor. Las obras ya estaban presentes en colecciones públicas y privadas internacionales y en la página web www.consonni.org (...)

(...) En la presentación de este archivo -que será de libre consulta- el director de Cultura de la Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa, Imanol Agote, destacó 'dos singularidades de consonni: el hecho de ser una productora de proyectos artísticos independiente y su capacidad de anticiparse a la hora de trabajar con artistas que, sin ser reconocidos a priori, han demostrado una gran proyección creativa' (...)

(...) La operación del frottage de Fraser ridiculizaba la estrategia de auto-mitificación del Guggenheim-Bilbao con su énfasis en la iconicidad de sus muros alabeados que lo separan de un afuera vulgar y pedestre. Una estrategia tan vana como banal (...)

Mugalari, 11 de junio de 201017/06/10 00:00:00

Shot with hidden cameras in the Guggenheim Bilbao, Little Frank and His Carp is based on an unathorized intervention in the museum designed by Frank Gehry (the “Little Frank” of the video´s title). A tourist is seen entering the museum and renting an audio-guide, which is heard as a voice-over on the DVD. She furrows her brow as the guide admits that “modern art is demanding, complicated, bewildering”, then bursts into a smile of relief when she hears that “the museum tries to make you feel at home, so you can relax and absorb what you see more easily.” She becomes pensive when the guide calls her attention to the museum´s “powerfully sensual” curves, whose “direct appeal has nothing to do with age or class or education.” When she´s finally invited to stroke the museum walls, she seems to get carried away. However, even when she pulls up her dress and starts rubbing up against a column, no one moves to intervene. After all, she is only doing what the audio-guide is telling her to do.
Little Frank and His Carp was inspired by the text of the audio-guide as a particulary outrageous example of the way corporatized museums like the Guggenheim are packaging artistic transgression and transcendence, subversion and sensuality. Biological metaphors and sexually suggestive anecdotes are paired with figures of technological wonder and cybernetic prowess in what could be seen as a catalogue of museological seduction in the age of globalization a neoliberalism.

Catalogue edited by Yilmaz Dziewior and published by Dumont Literatur, 2003

…the excessive perfomance of desire on Fraser´s part in little Frank and his carp, a work where an “over-receptive viewer” (in John Miller´s words) inherits the model of the widly-opened subjectivity first drafted in the characters of Fraser´s earlier critical performances, woven together from a congeries of social and institutional sources… In Litlle Frank and his carp, Fraser had herself filmed with hidden cameras as she enters the lobby of Frank Gehry´s architecturally spectacular Guggenheim Bilbao, requests an audio-guide to the museum, and begins explicitly to follow its instructions…Following the instructions, Fraser smiles resplendently…she presses her hand against her chest…she looks puzzled…her smile grows…invited by the guide to touch…Fraser continues to touch the museum wall, eventually rubbing her entire body against it. She pulls up her dress. She shows off her white thong. She rub her ass. A small crowd gathers…Taking the museum´s desire “literally” and taking “herself as its object might continue to be an accurate description of Fraser´s Little Frank… Fraser follows the museum´s injuctions, only to produce effects that they were never intended to allow. She becomes a subject given over ardently to what psychoanalysis would call “transference”, displacing affect from a (psychically) real to a surrogate object, in this case not the analyst but the undulating museum walls.Transference had been the dynamic that Fraser´s early performances had intended to engage and yet to disrupt, and so the reversal of that project needs to be registered here…While the former layering produced a performance of schizophrenic (perhaps elitist) difficulty, the latter seems now to result in one of spectacular (perhaps popular) trangression… In this, Little Frank and his Carp becomes what Fraser calls a “catalogue” of current “museological seduction”.

Catalogue edited by Yilmaz Dziewior and published by Dumont Literatur, 2003

Not all the works in the show are so rigorously conceptual. There is am amusing video by Andrea Fraser, Little Frank and his carp, in which she appear as an ecstatic visitor to the Guggenheim Bilbao, who takes the tour guide’s invitation to caress the sensuous curves of the walls all too literall.

The London Times, 25 de septiembre de 2002

The over-receptive viewer is the object of Little Frank and His Carp (2001). Here, a visitor to the Guggenheim Bilbao takes her audio tour utterly to heart. For this, Fraser enlisted several assistants to videotape her inside the museum with hidden cameras. Extolling the wonders of Frank Gehry’s quasi organic architecture, an ostentatious Acousti-guide voice suggests that the building might even comfort viewers faced with difficult or demanding art. At this prospect, Fraser’s “gullible” brow furrows until she accepts the Acousti-guide’s invitation to reach out and touch one of the museum’s hi-tech columns. Physical contact at once establishes a libidinal bond between viewer and building. Lightly stroking the panel gives way to passionate caresses. The male voice of the audio guide persists; it’s as if the woman is hering voices. Now swooning, she hikes up her dress and –butt thrust out for all to see – begins humping the column itself. Clearly, the idea that the museum’s building provides a refuge from artworks, instead of for them, is an odd one. Nonetheless, it is consistent with Frank Lloyd Wright’s avowed hostility toward painting and sculpture. Accordingly, Wright designed his Guggenheim building to be an artwork to compete with those it housed. Gehry, in contrast, maintains a close rapport with sculptors such as Oldenburg, Heizer and Serra. In this spirit, he thinks of his own work as sculpture. Even so, the Guggenheim Bilbao, like Wright’s antecedent, ends up as an assertion of the museum’s primacy over artist and viewer both. Ironically, it is the pliant (over-dominated) visitor´s unbridled passion that disrupts the museological decorum. Bystanders do double-takes, then pretend not to notice. Fraser’s conceit of being too innocent to know better approximates Jerry Rubin’s insurrectionary call (Do it!) for students to fuck in the classrooms. The enthusiast, however, simply smooths down her dress and proceeds to the exhibits.

Zur Kunst, 2002

Andrea Fraser “It’s about showing my disgust with the dominant discourse,” intones this wily artist in Official Welcome… Known for exposing institutional contexts and cultural spectacles, she plays all the roles, rolls out all the platitudes, and ends up Vanessa Beecroft undies and high heels. Even better, in this two-gallery, five-video show, is her performance at the Bilbao Guggenheim as a museum visitor who takes her audio-guide tour a bit too literally.

The Village Voice, 5 febrero de 2002

Andrea Fraser, Little Frank and His Carp (Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York) Who would have thought institutional critique would evolve into such smart burlesque? Or that Fraser’s acting would become so sly and self-assured? Little Frank is Gerhy, and the carp is the Guggenheim Bilbao, to which Fraser succumbs by way of an Acoustiguide tour. As a seductive male voice lays bare all of the building’s many charms, Fraser responds in kind, and a slow hump of the wall ensues. The visitors’ reactions in the background? Priceless.

Artforum, diciembre de 2002

For this reason, Andrea Fraser’s video sticks out. Shot in Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim, Bilbao, the film pokes fun at the herd mentality of today’s museum visitors and patronising “edutainment” strategies employed by establishments desperate to pack them in. Fraser is aided bay a ridiculous soundtrack. On screen we watch her pick up an audio guide and respond to its treacle-voiced commands to explore the curvy volumes of the Guggenheim foyer. Hitching her dress above her waist, she fondles a limestone wall with alarming impropriety.

Time Out London, 9-16 de octubre de 2002

In Fraser’s worldview, Rockefeller’s support, politically inspired in part, for Mexican modernism was a precursor of contemporary cultural globalism, especially the kind propounded by Thomas Krens. The Guggenheim Bilbao, located in the heart of Spain’s Basque region, is Fraser target in Little Frank and His Carp (2001), a video presented on a monitor at the entrance to Friedrich Petzel Gallery. Acoustiguides have long been grist for this artist, most notably in Introduction to the Whitney Biennal (1993), her contribution to that exhibition. Here, instead of creating an Acousticguide for gallery-goers, Fraser embodies a museum visitor using a real one. Filmed in the lobby of Frank Gehry’s “masterpiece”, she listens raptly to the words on the tape, which form soundtrack for the video. The recording rambles on about the glories of the architecture, barely referencing the works of art. Fraser literally writhes with pleasure as the recorded voice draws attention to the undulating curves and textured surfaces of the surronding space. At one point, she lifts her skimpy sweater dress, exposes her bare bottom, and bumps and grinds against one of the curvaceous columns as if humping the very architecture. This is art appreciation taken to an extreme. We can see the real museum-goers watch her performance, not too shocked or confused, as if they already understand-“Ah, yes, so transgressive”-that this must be “just contemporary art”.

Art in America, julio 2002

And in Little Frank and His Carp, 2001, passers by gape as Fraser rubs her body against the “powerfully sensual” curves of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao interior while listening to an audio-guide paean to the building’s fish-inspirated forms. If Thomas Krens realizes his expansioninst aims, perhaps Fraser will samba in a Guggenheim Rio someday.

Artforum, mayo de 2002

In an inversion of her familiar role as museum guide, the short and sweet Little Frank and his carp, seen at Friedich Pastel gallery, finds Fraser in the unaccustomed position of happy museum visitor. Surreptitiously shot at Guggenheim Bilbao, it depicts an unannounced performance for which Fraser cheerfully strolls through the atrium of Frank Gehry’s building led by the ubiquitous educational tool of the 21st-century museum, the audio guide. Fraser uses the disembodied voice-by turns ingratiatingly celebratory, condescending, sycophantic and authoritative –as ready-made, a fetish object akin to the TV remote control. Dutifully responding to its emotional cues and manipulative subtexts, Fraser admiringly approaches the abstracted fish-shaped tower at the centre of the hall (which, we are reminded, is a signature of the Gerhy mythology). Heeding the blandly erotised invitation to caress the tower’s walls (“run your hand over them… feel how smooth it is”), at the video’s climax Fraser yields to what becomes a comically masturbatory performance, stroking the leading edge of little Frank’s over-sized “carp” as well as her own flanks. Much to the surprised amusement of a nearby clutch of art tourists, Fraser renders unto the museum what its audio guide implicitly demands of the ideal cultural consumer: the unquestioned union of the institution and its public.

Frieze, Nº 86, abril de 2002

The prim and proper docent who led “alternative” museum tours (Fraser’s alter ego in her early work) is nowhere to be seen in work at two simultaneous solo shows. Instead, a sexy Fraser bares all during a talk in a collector’s home, lets it rip as Brazilian carnival dancer, and is seduced by the curvaceous walls of the Bilbao Guggenheim

Flash Art, Nº 223, marzo-abril de 2002

Another video shows her at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, listening to Acoustiguide device as it sings the praises of Frank Gehry’s design. In response, we see Fraser hiking up her mini-dress to hump one of the building’s curvaceous walls.

Time Out New York, enero 31 - febrero 7 de 2002

A piece called “Little Frank and His Carp” that I produced with consonni in the Guggenheim Bilbao served as an introduction. I perform the role of a museum visitor listening to the official audio tour, which can be heard as a voice-over in the video. The audio tour is a really outrageous example of the way corporatized museums are appropriating and commifying artistic transgression, sensuality, transcendence. We are told to caress the museum’s sensuous curves. Let’s just say that I get carried away while wearing very short dress.

Purple, Nº12, verano de 2002