TO NAME SOMETHING IS TO ASSERT POWER OVER IT, to fix and trap it within a pattern by establishing a self-fulfilling prophecy. An analysis entitled "Brisbane Conceptualism" or "Brisbane Minimolism" would assert - in much the same way as the title "Brisbane Dodo" - a common identity unifying art practice in this city. The outstanding characteristic of Brisbane art, however, as anywhere else, is the artists' individuality, locking any overall qualities which would designate a "Brisbane" style. Many different external influences hove affected it, some from the history of modernism, others from contemporary trends, not just a concern with the immediate personal, social and political situation in Brisbane.
However, there ore contextual peculiarities of art production in Brisbane. It is worth establishing these within a tighter theoretical structure. They parallel the environment surrounding the Dadoists of the First World War in central Europe. In particular, the amount of collaborative interaction among the- young artists in Brisbane is a similar response to the destructive political situation and the inheritance of a stagnant culture.
This situation is not readily comparable, except superficially, to that of other Australian state capitals similarly placed on the peripheries of the cultural determinants centered on Sydney and Melbourne. Brisbane's rural conservatism and the recent opportunistic, urban, economic-exploitation imposes a paradoxical mentality onto the younger artists in particular. This is a condition of seige in which the walls seem on the point of imminent collapse, alternating with the opposite numbing effect of a seeming removal from active reality; both anxiety and vacuity in on abse9ce of historical temporality and the accompanying possibility of change. It is an acute problem in Brisbane to reject surrender to extremes of anxiety and inertia.
Historically, Dada was a "state of mind" rather than an aesthetic program, or on artistic "movement". From about 1915 to 1923 its adherents, beliefs, forms and actions changed according to the geographical location of the protagonists and their immediate political and cultural concerns.
"What interests a Dadaist is the way he himself lives ...(Dada) transforms itself according to the races and events it encounters... it is nothing, it is the point at which Yes and No and all opposites meet ... Dada has no pretensions, just as life should have none"
Tristan Tzara, Manifesto, 1922
We are all dadas to some extent, especially since its nature was so varied, taking a poetic-rhetorical character in Zurich, a political one in Berlin, a psychoanalytic one in Paris as well as including the scientific mechanistic streak of Duchamp and Picabia, but common to all Dada was a rejection of the art object... that "thing” which was possessable, of material value, and which for that reason was artificially invested with aesthetic meaning. Revered by the modernist Avant Garde. The art object was the fetishistic depository of beauty.
In its place, Dada proclaimed the instantaneous moment as sole value. It was created through violence which incited and angered the viewers causing them to reject the system supportive of the aesthetic object. “After Dada, active Indifference entered Into life.” Tzara Dada was an immensely energised moral force which asserted a new humanism, restoring value to the life of the individual - which is why leftist historians see it as merely another aspect of bourgeois liberalism, rather than a genuine revolution. Yet as an anti-art, Dada was collective and communal, even without a formal leftist theory. It rejected the 'male artist as hero' myth of bohemia, and could not abide the futurist theory which extolled the machine age tended by the faceless proletariat. Dada's foremost purpose was communication and accessibility. There was no prophecy, and there were no (official) priests. In view of the denial of the male ego, it is not surprising that women played a larger role in Dada than in Cubism, let alone Futurism or Expressionism, which were fundamentally misogynous. Berlin Dada was especially committed to a didactic role in relation to the proletariat, hence its development (on the Futurist model) of photomontagist forms, satirical graphics, broadsheet journalism, leftist worker newspapers, street theatre and cabaret. The popular nature of the audience demanded immediacy of form and ease of mass distribution, rather than of permanence.
Though Dada's action was intuitive, rather than theoretical, it was neither esoteric, nor subjective. It was anti-intellectual, but not mindless; brutal, but not inhuman; antirational, but not undirected. Dada language and visual art are described conventionally as “anti-rational" but it has taken the anti psychiatry of Gllles Deleuze and Fellx Guattari to rightly account for Dada on the basis of their notion of delire, a much more profound concept than that of delirium or clinical insanity.
Both Dada and anti psychiatry deny that the rational exists. According to anti-psychiatry, reason is delusion whereas what is customarily accepted as unreason is reality. This is not to deny the existence of intelligence but it is conceived in a new way. The individual master ego is short circuited in favour of a social configuration linking a variety of free elements in an unstructured, planar, horizontal fluidity: no stratification of languages as systems, no scales of reason and unreason. Reality is flow, change, the moment, in an historical transformation responsive to immediate conditions. Dada was working with langue, language before “languages”, and manifested politically as peripheral culture.
In Paris the ground had already been laid for Dada by the inheritance of Alfred Jarry's anti-rationalism and by a succession of other distinguished involuntary explorers of the transcendant and independent power of language over the conscious subject-speaker. Among these, Jean-Pierre Brisset, with Raymond Roussel, and much later Antonin Artaud and Louis Wolfson, were to be major influences on French post-structuralist, psychoanalytic, language theory.
Post-modernism in certain forms is a continuation of Dada, and therefore it may be said that Dada is present in much of the new art happening all over the world, but it is still possible to make a specific case for Dada's manifestation in Brisbane as amounting to more than the common heritage of Dada. Dada cannot be replayed by the simple adoption of its formal characteristics and actions. It demands a certain ethical commitment. Nor is it really the specifics of subject-matter which are the focus of Dada. It is Dada's collaborative anti-aesthetic, and its rejection of both object and subject/ maker which is important and, above all, the sociopolitical context In which these appear which justifies the epithet 'dadalstic '. Brisbane Dada appears within a system of socio-political repression of a highly active kind and within a sterility of culture which creates a vacuum for the operation of severe rightism and its accompanying brutality. It is not too far fetched to compare it to Zurich and Berlin in 1915 -1920.
The Brisbane artists selected for discussion, in the main, began their art pract1ce 1n the late 70s or early 80s. They are the more “established" of the younger experimental artists in the city, having occasionally exhibited interstate, or in the commercial Brisbane gallery run by Michael Milburn, or at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane. The interaction between the individuals of this group is so close and constant, that is nearly impossible to document it all, or even keep track of it in a coherent account. In Brisbane, there has always been a very limited number of people whose work was of an experimental nature, or who were concerned with organizing a support system for such artistic activity, and perhaps because of this there was, among these artists, an unusual degree of sympathy for each others' aims, and above all, a state-of-emergency consciousness that mutual encouragement must be forthcoming if survival was to be ensured.
The anti-linguistics of Deleuze and Guattari explains most satisfactorily the politics of this collaboration. The basic notion is the construct proposed by Foucault or Lacanian psychoanalysis, namely the existence of a central core of power, hierarchically tightly structured, from which a group of dissidents is excluded and cast into passivity and helplessness (rather on the model of the fallen angels!)
At the peripheries of power such groups develop, in reaction, languages and behavioural forms which are either overtly aggressive, or compensatory in some esoteric manner, possibly posing as initiated knowledge which can be so covert a response to exclusion that even the protagonists may not be aware of their belligerent status vis-a-vis the central dominant. This is how Foucault, Lacan and Kristeva analyse the delirium speech of Brisset, Wolfson, and Roussel.
Deleuze modifies these conclusions in a very important way in his accounts of the nomads. He denies that the languages of the peripheries of the borders, are primarly a reaction, or an “alternative”, to the modes of the state, but that they have their own self contained rationale for existence (the consequence of their own historical development). State and periphery do not rely on each other in the sense that, in historical time, neither preceded the other. The state did not create the nomads, nor vice-versa, not even indirectly, It is only secondarily that they have an “insider-outsider" relationship. The periphery is coherent without reference to the centre.
What has resulted from the state's repression of peripheral culture has been the creation of the war machine. Dada would not have existed had Europe not entered into a condition of war and economic disaster. But, the inner life of Dada has always existed, whether in Jarry or Morgenstern or Brisset. Unlike langue, the war machine is always directed specifically against the state. (The 'state' should be understood as any condition of static construction, 'harmony', 'balance', which manifests corresponding socio-political and cultural forms.) The point is that in the Deleuzian account the peripheral is not merely a negative pole to the empowered centre, but is also positively charged. In fact, both the centre and periphery have negative and positive aspects and are not necessarily in a relation of right to left respectively. Though this is a relation which is relevant in the present case. But they cannot interchange. When Dada was brought to the centre and empowered as surrealism, it was dead.
Although basically of a conceptualist nature, the most overt example of dadaist activity in Brisbane after 1981 was the O'flate group. In February 1982, Jeanelle Hurst, Harley West, Adam Boyd and Chris Maver established studios and performance spaces in Red Comb House, a vast, cathedral like disused chicken factory. Art activity of all kinds took place here including multimedia nights of live music and performance and crowds of up to 500 people. In May 1982 Jeanelle Hurst, Russell Lake, and Gary Warner and Adam Boyd established an art space called One Flat Exhibit In Edmonstone Street In South Brisbane. Jeanelle Hurst was living in the flat at the back of this space at that time, and finally, in the bathroom.
Meanwhile Red Comb House led an harassed existence, Hollie continued the Red Comb studios until 1983. At the same time Brian Doherty and Jeanelle Hurst established Gallery Office Exhibit in Turbot Street. In 1983-84 what had become known as the O'flate group moved to the George Street space, a derelict office accessible to the public who did, in fact, come in and browse. When that was closed Jeanelle Hurst, Adam Boyd, Zeliko Maric and Russell Lake formed O'Flission and subsequently, O'flate. To work with conceptual, questioning modes of art In Brisbane is to take a definite political stand. It is not a fashionable or whimsical artistic fad. It means that a Dadaist lifestyle is obligatory, the adoption of collective action. O'flate organized, obtained VAB grants, and pushed events forward with energy and optimism.
Jeanelle Hurst produced a rich assortment of performances, films, and static installations in those years. Including the co-editing of Art Walk with Brian Doherty and then her more personal Art Wonder Stories, where dadaist typography and layout combined conventional and experimental writings with outrageous montagist graphics, exploring anti-art through popular culture and the media.
Although O'flate did provide exhibition space for young artists who had no access to the commercial or state galleries, it should not be dismissed as yet another traditional reaction by bohemian artists to the status quo.
In their Installation at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane O'flate aimed to instigate discussion of local art by institutions who, they felt, were reneging on their obligations to support local work. And the O'flate installation at the IMA's Brisbane Hot show, (badly misplaced in the context of expressionistic art) displayed the ellipsis of Dada, joined to an engaging. effervescent directness, both assertive and aggressive. The spontaneity masked an irony which paradoxically distanced and disciplined the references. Similarly, for their work in a display of Queensland painting at the University of Queensland Art Museum (Queensland Works 1950 - 1985) O'flate produced a stack of televisions (operative) collaged and painted like totemic “sacra”, questioning art/media relations and the sheer wonder of the electronic modes of communication.
In 1985 the building known as “The Belltower” featured an exhibition called Studio Plunge, in which the O'Flisslon show Vision of O'Flission represented the O'flate group and many others including Chrissy Feld working in dress, and others working in furniture/sculpture. At this show Jeanelle hung very large, Marcel Janco style cardboard “figures” from the ceiling, reminiscent of department store advertising displays. Russell Lake's wooden pyramids were built in a scientific optical dimension, which has always been present in O'flate films and videos. Adam Boyd continued to use travel as a personal cypher which has continued into 86 in his Jumbo works. Zel iko Maric painted interplanetary backdrops.
In 1986 contact with other Australian art centres was achieved when O'flate toured the country. Since then, Jeanelle Hurst has continued working with the Telecom Viatel system where art/technology is relocated in the new inter-cellular structures inherent In telecommunications systems.
Adam Boyd is now operating an inter-active dialogue through the establishment of the John Mills National and Annex exhibition space at 40 Charlotte St, Brisbane with Virginia Barratt, herself a dancer and performance artist who has worked with Michelle Andringa in both gallery and popular music venues, producing performances of a critical socio-political nature.
Collaborating with O'Flate at various stages and involved in very nearly every significant aspect of Brisbane's experimental art. Brian Doherty has combined aesthetic, communicative, organisational and political concerns in a preferred working mode of collaboration. Strongly influenced by Dadaist typography and by Robert McPherson's conceptualism his most recent concern has been the visual communicative tactics of the press, junk advertising and packaging. Acknowledging Arp and Satle as influences, he has experimented with all aspects of design. His large paintings of 1982 maintained a deliberately open quality, just as his recent work (which can be read either as series or as individual contemplative pieces) demands a vocal, interactive response from the viewer, a device which has occasionally provoked hostility. Severely reductionist in the manner of Picabia, Brian Doherty's work is, nonetheless, immediate and accessible, humorous, as well as intellectual. The elegance of the slightest intervention across the codes of the newspaper layouts by silkscreen, or with a brush, suggests an esoteric aesthetic, which is misleading. Like Arp 's own chance collages and drawings, which are almost oriental in their refinement and discipline, Brlan's work is not formalistic, but seeks the contrary, which is to reveal the structures of his found objects and the oddity of the perceptual process by which a verbal text is “read” visually and imbibed directly.
His prime concern for communication led to his involvement in the Production of Art Walk and, finally, almost inevitably, to direct action as secretary of the Queensland Artworker's Alliance to improve the economic, legal, and social status of the artist generally.
Brian Doherty's collaboration with six others – among whom was Barbara Campbell, the former Coordinator of the IMA - greatly aided by Edward Riggs, led to the AND SNUFF. 1986: SHANE KNEIPP prototype of recent experimental art spaces in Brisbane. A Room, which existed for six months in 1984. Although the artists worked as separate individuals, (sharing a common minimalist-conceptualist working method) Barbara continued the collaborative aspect that she and Edward Riggs had encouraged as IMA policy from 1982. Though not a studio space, A Room provided an informal meeting ground for like-minded artist experimenters, while operating also as a successful public gallery. Though the work of Barbara Campbell and Ted Riggs owes more to an ironic conceptualism than to Dada, it is not possible to give a sensible account of the latter in Brisbane without mentioning their supportive roles and organisational skills. Further, within some of their performances at A Room, dada humour and nonsense was certainly present as it was in Barbara's paintings of proverbs which studied word-image relations in a dryly reductionist mode, taking the relation to the logical extreme of dadaist absurd. This was also an element in her performance (the first by a local artist at the Queensland Art Gallery) Culture Vulture which was in dada fashion socially critical of the bourgeois supporters of ·high art·. Edward Riggs' word-pairs on a large scale were a more personal statement about dyslexia, a cool examination of himself as a specimen.
Two significant consequences resulted from the work of Barbara Campbell and Edward Riggs at A Room. Firstly, it generated a feeling that such a venture should be continued with a different group and this was carried out under the co-ordination of Paul Andrew, who saw through the establishment of That art space. Secondly, their resurrection of the Queensland Artworkers Union in 1984, lapsed since its first appearance as a model of the fabled Poets Union of the late '70s.
It was left to Brian Doherty to strengthen and enlarge this organization, aided by an unusually energetic and motivated group of recent Queensland College of Art students, particularly a group of photographers, Robyn Gray, Anna Zsoldos and Leanne Ramsay who established themselves in the now demolished Observatory Gallery. Jay Younger, Anna Zsoldos and Leanne Ramsay have come out of this grouping into the political activity of the Alliance.
Among individuals who locate their work within a general leftist political context using dadaist modes Shane Kneipp has produced some significant work, shown at That in 1986. Openly and loudly anarchistic, his work takes the form of densely constructed collages and reliefs of found objects. Quoting ‘60s pop in encaustic paintings, he transforms its facile brightness into an Art Brut aggression. Highly idealistic and totally disbelieving, his work is close to Berlin Dada, and in its obsessive minuteness, recalls the British neo-Dada of the '50s, the pop art of Peter Blake, and perhaps, some early Hamiltons.
A close associate of Shone Kneipp, Darryl Graham in his exhibition Less not more also at That in 1986, through more formal structures drawn from Pop art and media culture debated the themes of war and nuclear arms.
Malcolm Enright, whose works either at the periphery or at the centre have been energised by the true spirit of Dada, has been an enthusiastic supporter of Brisbane art since the early '70s. His successful mainstream career as a self-trained graphic designer and his strong connections with the New York art world have not diminished his commitment to local causes. Whether bringing to That the Graffiti Art Brut of the New York streets and linking it to such art in Brisbane, or working with the Artworkers Alliance, he has remained a central figure in experimental art in this city. In the Dada spirit, which he embraces enthusiastically, he has continued since 1972 to collage “inseparables”, found objects, texts and images which represent eternal incongruities bound together in hopeless addiction by fate, nature, or custom. His 1986 exhibition of a large number of lnseparables at Michaei Milburn Galleries ranged across the social, political, sexual, consumer, historical, and linguistic zones, varying in mood from the lyrical to the dark to the absurdly tragic. Without ideology, they trigger thought concerning the play of chance in creating a relation unintentionally, but with wicked appositeness.
Eugene Carchesio operates a similar, understated humour in a graphic mode on a diminutive scale. An exhibition at That in February '87 showed a move from a graphic style distantly influenced by Joseph Beuys, to minimalist relief sculpture consisting of an installation of matchboxes containing various motifs. They recall the boxes of Joseph Cornell. Miscast as an American surrealist, Cornell's boxes in fact demonstrate not the turgid psychological theories of that style. but rather the enigmatic presentations of situations in a freer, dadaist mode. Eugene Carchesio's works have similarly eluded interpretation on the level of symbol, although appearing to refer to signs both conventional and personal. They are intuitive, rather, re-using codes without the significance to which they are attached and deteminedly avoiding formalistic organisation.
A final set of connections should be mentioned here in passing. Eugene Carchesio was originally associated with One Flat. Now, in his work with Tim Gruchy (who uses both static and kinetic visual modes) and with Steven Grainger (a musician as well as a visual artist) Eugene pursues the affiliation of sound, graphics and film, with performance. Tim Gruchy was a member of Zip who released experimental sound and graphic works from 1982. Before it was eventually dispersed in 1986, Zip was also the name of a performance group co-ordinated by Mark Ross in which Tim was involved. In various sound works, whether in a gallery or in a popular venue in the form of the band The Closest Thing, these artists have produced a rich mixture of dadaistic improvisation.
The above account has merely touched on the range of dadaistic work produced in Brisbane. Its chief intention has been to record the sorts of creative links resulting from an immediate response to unusually repressive socio-political conditions.