Imagined Dialogues: André Cadere at the ICA, London

20th FEB 2008

AC: This place looks familiar. Where are we?

SP: We're at the ICA, on the Mall in London. Its 2008 - very nearly 30 years since you yourself were resident here in the 'new gallery'. 30 years. That means that art historians should/will show renewed interest in your work. The moratorium is over. You are fair game.

AC: Why are we here?

SP: I'm intrigued by your work - and especially so by certain aspects of it. I've spent 4 years or so, intending to write about it. I've been to many places to find you, but not here. I've even been to the ICA's archive at Tate Britain looking for you, but still i didn't write anything. It was at Weils in Brussels that DS gave me access to his personal archive and collection of ephemera and i found a letter from your time in London, plus an ICA bulletin - a broadsheet I seem to remember. Ephemera's perhaps the wrong word. It seems to me that the actual site of your work is in the social relations of the exhibition, display and collection of art. These artifacts are often the very things that define relations, or establish them. In that way, your invitation cards have a similar status to your barres. Is that the case? What do you think of this conjecture?

AC: You're looking out of the window Simon. Tell me what you see. This place seems familiar. I've seen it before. I remember seeing it.

SP: Yes. The music took me away, somewhere else. I'm sat here at the back of the bar, my back against a wall clothed in fabric which has the appearance of being from the Festival of Britain in the 50s. In fact, I was looking out of the window, over towards the South Bank and Festival Hall. The music sounds very contemporary in that it's reviving jazz and easy-listening into a 'chill-out' or lounge music. Quite unlike the music that I imagine being played here in 1976. Leafing through the '60 years of the ICA' book in the ICA bookshop I was reminded that you were here at the time of Throbbing Gristle & COUM Transmission. Reading this month's bulletin there's renewed interest in those overtly political projects.

Yours seem less so. I'm intrigued by this tension between making artworks that are made accessible by the mode of display and that seek to shock or…

AC: You're drifting again. What is it that you're saying about my work exactly? That it's NOT political? Why put it in tension with this other 'political' art? My work is made to be seen. Its mode of display is crucial. I insert it into very specific contexts: on the one hand I carry it with me in the street so that anyone can see it; on the other, I also insist on its presence in other artists' exhibitions. Sometimes I go as far as leaving i behind. Often I just attend the opening with a barre. (and, I may give the barres to specific people: Gilbert & George for example; or to a particular curator or collector.

SP: So let's talk bout the (other) tension in your work then: who is your public? how do you distinguish between carrying a stick in the street and carrying it to an opening (sorry vernisage) And your work themselves: I've seen the itineraries! They all define very specific locations at which you'll show your work. Your destinations mostly appear to be 'art world' locations. Why is this?

AC: Let me save you from drifting-off again. Are you tired? You're glazing over. I guess I've forgotten what it is to be tired. Did you see that sequence of images from the Barry Barker show when you were in Paris last week? At that point I was so tired, but still compelled to make my work. And by the end, I was just writing itineraries of 'being still'. No movement at all, except maybe from one ward to another.

SP: … and even then, you were recording your movement - writing those itineraries and sending them to Yvon Lambert . I take it that they were written in retrospect? They weren't plans to walk at some point? They're of a different order to those that you made for Lynda Morris at the Slade? This was a plan, right? To walk to very specific locations? Did you walk? Or did you just meet people there?

AC: You'll have read that while I was last here at the ICA I took staff-members to the pub? Well, I think that was the itinerary. You'll have to cross-check the dates. You have the dates, no? You have the bulletin from 1976 as well a copy of that Slade itinerary? It was in Paris I imagine, in the retrospective show that BM put together.

21st FEB 2008

AC: You left in a hurry yesterday to see Diving Bell And A Butterfly. How was that? Would I have liked it?

SP: While watching it I thought of you It's a French-language film and I was reminded that, when you are here, French would have been your preferred tongue. Scenes shot in Paris reminded me of my visit to the Museum of Modern Art de Ville de Paris just last week - a week ago in fact, and how you are known and revered among French speakers, though perhaps less well-known among English speakers, and here in the UK and the US. But most of all, there is a scene of Mr. Bauby sat in a wheelchair, on a platform among the waves, on an incoming tide. The narrator, (or rather the subtitles) tell us of the coincidence with the Count of Monte Christo - also being confined to one place through illness and frailty. And I think of another coincidence, with you in your hospital bed, as someone who is mobile, itinerant. Did I tell you that I've been reading Virginia Woolf's account of Coleridge? She describes him confined to bed, confined to talking, no longer able to walk.

AC: Yet being confined to my bed didn't top me from being 'mobile' as such. I would imagine where I should walk next. Name me any city to which I've been in the last eight years of my life and I'll make you an itinerary. I can imagine a route for you, even when in my hospital bed.

SP: I'd really wondered about those itineraries. It's worth stating that they're not written after having walked to present the barre. They're plans; they're statements of intent. I imagine that you either walked there as reconnaissance, that you look at a directory which linked art galleries, or that you had some other form of local knowledge to help you elect locations and the route between them. Is this fair? I'm accusing you of having very very specific intent here: of being motivated by wanting to 'present' (présentation) your work to very specific people, namely gallerists, collectors, dealers and so on.

AC: If you read that PS1 catalogue you'll see that someone got there first with that theory. Or at least… (that's your phone. Answer it!) Or at least they imply that you look at where I travelled and who I met a map an be constructed which defines he scope of a particular artworld at that point in time. If I was to imagine my itinerary it would, of course, be determined by my knowledge of the artworld at that time, 30 or so years ago. It's true that if you check some of the addresses on the New York City itineraries, for example, or look at the Turin map that was used to promote my work there, or at some/one of the Düssedorf itineraries, you'll be able to see that I planned to walk from one gallery to another. But if you look at the film, (the one that you saw in Paris last week) you'll see that I walk between venues among whoever happens to be passing-by. I'm inhabiting both the specialist 'artworld' and a less immediately definable milieu. It depends where you want to place emphasis: i guess some people liked my work precisely because it liberates the artwork from the gallery; if it is in the street - like the early spray-painted marks that I left in Paris. (Ok, they are still close to Yvon's gallery premises.) And they do have some relation to Daniel Buren 's work, no one can really deny that, but there are at least tow other modes that my work exhibits: one is the interventionist aspect of me leaving my barres in other people's exhibitions, or even just turning-up with them at he vernisage, talking to visitors whilst holding barre over my shoulder.

SP: Yes, that's true. Even here, at the ICA, Gabriel Orozco chose to prop one of your barres in an exhibition of 'artists' favourite artists'. There is always the isue of how to present the barres too, now that you aren;t around to animate them… we'll come back to this.

AC: The third mode - and one that i know your interested in - is the way in which I work explicitly with the artworld itself - inhabiting its social networks.

SP: Yes, you're right. The 'site' into which you work seem to me to be neither 'street' nor 'gallery' (and by those terms I mean among the common-sense 'general public' or within the gallery as a physical, social, cultural entity.) It seems that you draw our attention to the 'gallery' in a wider definition, but to its entanglement within the social political, economic contingencies. And rather than do this from 'outside' as a form of 'institution critique' you are obviously within these networks. You are either part of it, or you are trying to become part of it. (There is some self-interest in your endeavours, right?) This is made most apparent to me in your appearances at openings or outside of galleries, dealers etc. But also, I was really struck by how your barres might work in themselves to produce these networks. In Paris, the barres were not shown in isolation. They were often shown in groups of ,3 or 4. So, for example, we could see that Gilbert & George pieces - clever - nearly, but not quite identical barres, (suggesting that all that differentiates Gilbert from George is an 'error' in calculation somewhere!?) Or there were pieces that were brought together each given to, or collected by different owners. The display/information texts stated, with a simplicity that bears a striking resemblance to your own itineraries, titles of the work and a list of names of owners of the work. So, we had Mdm. X, Mr Y and Mrs Z, brought together, held together, by dint of ownership. The network that you inhabited is made manifest by presentation of the work in this way.

I was surprised at how the 'presentation' of your work in Paris became such a focus from me. I'd expected to go there to meet the curator and was pleased to find that I found new connections between aspects of your work and other artists that I'd previously hoped for but never found.

AC: Which artist? Not Daniel Buren? There are some stories…

SP: No, No. Richard Long. I'd asked him about you. He remembered you of course, But I had no idea that there might be anything more to it than that he was also on the circuit of galleries across Europe and the US into which you were insinuated. So, for example, there's a photo from Documenta 5 in which you sand within a stone circle, crossing your barre with a fellow visitor's walking stick.I would expect to see yo there, so no surprises. And then there's a photo from Galerie Yvon Lambert in which you are photographed among a small group - which includes both RL and YL. BM then places one of your larger pieces from 1974 (?) in very close proximity to RL's St. Just Strip, which I take it, was already installed downstairs at the Museum. I'm interested in exploring this relationship. You both walking as a way of making work.

AC: Yes, Documenta 5. I thought that you might be about to ask me about my failure to walk from Paris to Kasel that year. But yes, Richard Long. It's true that he was on the very circuit of galleries that I was interested in becoming part of. His work itself though, is bound by the gallery. How can you see a relationship between or practices? Surely we are unlike in that respect?

SP: If we think of your work in terms of (It's getting busy in here. Some lecturers talking about Hobbesbawm and Revolution. I'm going to get some water, then go for a walk, towards DA's gallery. Coming with me?)

[Later, on New Hungerford/Golden Jubilee Bridges. Then in Perdoni's in Lambeth, on the way to D's gallery.]

SP: I need to know about your time here in London in 1976. After all, that's the reason why I'm walking and talking with you. I've asked around to some extent: NL at the Lisson Gallery remembered you; I guess I should speak to Lynda Morris or Barry Barker too.

AC: Yes, you should. I worked with Lynda while she was at the Slade.

SP: I've seen the itinerary for your walks from the Slade. They're mostly in London. (All bar one, which is in Oxford.) As these the same events as the ones where you were at the ICA? They are pubs within central London - W1, WC1, N1 and so on. I recognize one of them as being very near the Lisson Gallery. It's always been in that area. It looks as though you chose your venues according to their proximity to galleries. Is that right?

22nd FEB 2008

AC: Where are we today? What did you want to ask me, talk to me about today?

SP: There are a few things: I wanted to ask you about re-enactment of your work, maybe; which brings me back to the question of your itineraries; and then i'd like to think about some of the other practice that might relate to yours, (Tino Seghal in particular) and made some comments on your film.

So firstly, your itineraries in London. It is tempting from me to draw on them directly, to walk over the same ground, mark as an anniversary perhaps; o keep your schedule in the hope that through such a reenactment I might either achieve, some kind of authentic position - performing a precise overlaying of one time onto another. But I prefer to have you here, haunting the present in less precise manner. I think it's important to acknowledge that your presence might be constant, though sometimes becomes more distinct and tangible. Like today: we're not trying to mimic an 'authentic' moment. Or enter into another time; rather , we're talking across time as well as in-time and you will be non-plussed by what you find I'm sure. There is no magic or ritual performed here, just a constant imagining and summoning-up. We know that you might be here at any time and that your presence is made tangible though our own imagination and memory as much as an authentic trace that you have left.

AC: So where else am I? Am I just here at the ICA? Where else do I haunt?

SP: You're very much present in Brussels where several collectors , curators and supporters of yours keep you in memory. Conversation makes your presence felt: I've had several such in Brussels that have brought you and your work into the present quite sharply and forcefully.

AC: And what of this place? Why did you choose to bring me back here?

SP: The ICA has been looking back over 60 years of its programme. Your work here was by no means spectacular, preferring to be behind the scenes, away from the eye of visitors here. When i think of the artists that have worked in similar ways, I think of Gabriel Orozco, whose work I remember seeing here in 1994 I think - the melon in the bookshop, for example. Or Tino Seghal whose gallery assistants played-out his simple choreography, rolling on the floor or kissing. Both slight interventions without appealing to the conventions of the exhibition, of having artifacts within the gallery. No coincidence hat GO chose your work for hat show here. Or that TS as first supported by Jan Mot in Brussels – who is also a fan of and exhibitor of your work.

AC: And the film: which film is this? And where did you see it? There is very little footage of me walking with the batons…

SP: It was in Paris - a copy of a 16mm film, transferred to DVD and projected at a very large scale. I mention the DVD transfer because one of my observations of the film relates directly to this process of transfer. But first , I have to say that I was fascinated by the film, I had imagined that you would walk with great purpose from one location to another. From the film, I can see that there is a deal of nonchalance in your walk. It is a stroll, a idle display rather than an urgent transport of the bâton from one venue to another. It confirmed to me that there is a commitment to make the barre accessible to passers-by, at least. Although I'm suspicious that your pace and style of walking is put-on for the camera. I can see that there's a moment of awkwardness at the start of the film: the one time that you look at the camera acknowledging that you are aware of its position in relation to you and the control over it that you have. At first I wanted to check that the film wasn't in slow-motion, such was the quality and measure of each of your steps. I made a note of the relative speed and position of the passers-by, all of whom appeared to move in 'real-time', at a pace familiar to anyone who lives, works or walks in a city. You appear as a flamboyant 'flâneur', intent on drifting - seeing and being seen. Seeing yourself through the imagined eye of the camera that follows you. And like the flâneur in literature and in theory, I couldn't help wonder what extent the apparent disinterest was a veil drawn over a very pointed and determined figure, walking with precision of movement and intent.

AC: So you are returning to this question of my motivation? Do you still doubt that i meant to make my work available, presented to passers-by?

23rd FEB 2008

SP: My suspicion - and my interest - is that you chose to have these two modes of display. Even during the same piece - the same 'présentation' - produce two distinct publics: the first is incidentally produced by passers-by momentarily glancing at the work as you stroll; additionally, you have a public who, it seems, were less easy to provoke into paying attention, yet who I think, you actually wanted to have the strongest engagement - namely the gallerist whose venue you walked to. Remember that the geometry of the walk itself was always defined by these venues. The itineraries determine a level of precision in your work. They are far from aimless 'drifts'.

AC: But this was the tension in my work all along - most obviously borne out/in my gallery interventions.

SP: But I'm interested in your walks - in the way that they apparently are democratic and generally available to a 'general public' but then are defined by these professional co-ordinates. It's at this point that the real tension in your work is felt: you assert yourself and your work to the artworld; asserting a status that the artworld is unwilling to validate when there's a slower process at work within the artworld - of watching an artist from being 'emerging', 'mid-career' and 'mature'; you seem to short-cut this process. This assertion of your own work - of your own expectation to be part of the artworld – is one that artists live with a part of their professional lives.

AC: But why would this be of interest to you? (Let alone anyone else?)

SP: While trying to work-out who made artwork through walking - a 'formal' or technical way of defining a practice I know - I read about you, met people who are fans of your work. Thumbing through the PS1 catalogue there's mention of your being in London and 'trying and failing'; (or words to that effect) to work with the Lisson Gallery. I followed up on this relationship with them to see why or how it could be said to have failed and found myself within that artworld, asking questions about you, but having questions asked of me and my artwork. I felt as if I had inveigled myself into this artworld in a way that was similar, in effect, (though not intention I think) to yours. Except that rather than have a barre as the object to insert within the artworld's networks, I had you.

AC: But why would anyone else be interested in this understanding of my work? I think this situation of wanting to be welcomed in, to have validation from specific people or institutions is intrinsic to any artist's engagement with the artworld. And I know that there was some hostility toward me from some artists at the time when I was making work. Are you sure that anyone wants to hear about this? You're making huge assumptions about how other artists might think about this issue. I'm not sure how I feel about you putting emphasis on this aspect of my work, in fact. After all, given the opportunity, I might well have accepted my position within the artworld. Have you thought about how I might be working now, had I lived? Do you think I'd still see, (in your terms) the 'site' of my work being the social/professional networks of th artworld? Do you think that , had I been invited to exhibit in my own right, that I would still be walking my barres from gallery to gallery? Look at the show in Paris - if I was alive now how much emphasis would be placed on my interventions? Already we can see how my barres are exhibited rather than 'presented'. There's no need for me to animate them to insert them into other artists' exhibitions. They've been installed as any other artifact/sculptural object. This is pretty consistent with how they were installed within my own lifetime too. What does that mean or do to your theory?

SP: Well there's certainly less [obvious?] emphasis placed on your work. I'd heard that the trajectory for your work was towards larger-scale pieces - so that your own emphasis was on the barre (of any scale) and on the mathematics that underlie them. So the mobility, or the distribution or dispersal of your work becomes secondary, once a 'channel' is opened which guaranteed the exhibition of your work… Is this the case? Is there anyone I can ask about this?

AC: You should ask BM or DS as they remember. But can I ask you about the film that you saw? The one in Paris… You spent most of the night watching it, or I hear. Stood, making copious notes, getting in the way of all the other guests at the vernisage…

SP: The film was hard to avoid, and at only 2 minutes 58 seconds it compelled me to watch it over and over, studying every detail. Aside from being rare footage of you walking, I was struck by the final few seconds when the image fade quite abruptly , to white. We see you, follow you down the street, keeping our distance but maintaining a physical proximity to you - as if you may stop or we may quicken our step, catch-up with you and tap you on the shoulder. Just at that moment, when this seems possible, you fade, fade-out to white and all I can see is a faint afterimage and then black. Left staring at the wall, where you were a few seconds earlier, there's a sudden rupture and back you come, breaking through as a quantized, pixellated form, back into the present. Breaking through time, to assert your influence right now. The image is lower-resolution, with increased contrast, more compressed. Rather than the authentic filmic moment, the verité footage, with its smooth grain and slowly slipping frame, we have a harsh, sudden, abstracted, compressed version of you. Within 10 seconds you are one again. Your breaking-through leaves us with a challenge: to deal with you in your authentic art-historical moment, or to think of your ongoing assertion - your re-animation, across time, breaking through into our consciousness right now.

I'm on my way home now. I've heard that your retrospective show in Germany is reviewed in this month's Frieze, (by Mark Godfrey) and that there's mention of your being at the ICA. Are you about to be subject to a 'revival' I wonder?

AC: It's true: what was that you said about becoming part of art history?

SP: Meeting an art historian in Brussels several years ago, she spoke of the unwritten rule of their profession - that 30 years must elapse before an artists and their work can become a valid object of study. Is it any coincidence that your work is being shown again? These exhibitions seem of a different order to those previously.

AC: Those early exhibitions, though capturing the breadth of my work were driven by those who are fans or supporters of me and my legacy. DS and BM have been key. Are these shows any different?

SP:It's true that BM is behind the show in Paris. I also how the work will be re-framed. I was surprised to find hat the catalogues were largely duplicates or copies of those previous shows - in Linz or Paris/PS1. Are there aspects of your work that have been underplayed? Are there other aspects that could have been attended to?

[break]

I want to return to your relationship to other artists, in particular to contemporaries of yours. My interest is in 'walking as an art practice' of course, and I have wanted to understand your work against RL's for some tie. Also, from the film, I was immediately reminded of Acconci's Following Pieces, as well as subsequent work by Sophie Calle. Do you see similarities? Can you see where I want to go with this? (Towards thinking about your practice of meeting and walking and modes of sociality in yours and their work…)

*This document re-published in corrected form during February 2013, in preparation for a presentation for the exhibition Documenting Cadere 1972 - 1978 at Modern Art Oxford.

http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/whats-on/andre-cadere/about/