This discussion took place in Santiago, Chile on the 30 October 2007, during the preparation of the exhibition El Manifiesto de Santiago / Das Santiago-Manifest at the Matucana 100 cultural centre. Simon Gush was one of the participants in this project that had the attempt to write a manifesto (i.e. looking for common grounds which artists can share in our contemporary political and social environment) as its major focus.

Philippe Van Cauteren : Santiago is on the same latitude as South Africa. I mention this because, in your work, you are investigating contexts, environments or situations. How do you perceive Santiago?

Simon Gush : I find it difficult to comment on Santiago immediately. I think that one must be sensitive to the site one is working in and I am quite nervous about commenting on other cultures or situations. In my opinion, one of the strong aspects of this exhibition, El Manifiesto de Santiago, is that it is not concerned with making statements about another context. Rather, it provides a space in which we can discuss the way we could approach foreign contexts.

PVC : However, your work in India, Moving House , which was also produced during a short period of time, could also be read as a comment on that situation. You specifically chose the Chaudhuri Bari as your location and hired 7 bicycle rickshaws to try and pull the building forward.

SG : In that situation, I was interested in exploring the question of working in a foreign context. When an artist is visiting outside of his normal environment, there is a transaction that takes place whereby one often takes more than one gives. There is a certain power relationship involved in taking the artwork you made there back to where you came from, in whatever form that might take. The experience of riding in the rickshaws in India was interesting in relation to this transaction because although the drivers have their own power. They are unionised and can therefore they have agency. But even if the passenger is aware of this, he/she is still paying to be pulled along by another human being. I found it very uncomfortable. I wanted to somehow expose this kind of feeling. The work is as much about the transaction of hiring the rickshaws as it is about them actually trying to pull the house forward.

PVC : How do you define context, in political and social terms?

SG : It think it is impossible to escape a political reading of idea of context. Political and social are inseparable for me, although I don't think they are the same thing.

PVC : Artists from Chile are often connected to the dictatorship story or the genealogy of Chilean contemporary art. As a young artist with a particular relationship to apartheid, how does the political history of your country affect you in positioning yourself as an artist in other contexts?

SG : Since moving to Europe I have been more aware of the extent to which growing up in South Africa has defined how I approach the world. Having said this, I don't want to be seen as a South African artist exclusively. I think this label effects how an audience abroad reads the work too much. I try to avoid this because the viewer tends to rely on preconceived ideas when positioning themselves in relation to the work. I think there are too many shows in Europe that exoticise African art.

PVC : There is also a kind of positive discrimination happening, whereby some African artists are given opportunities that they would not have gotten if they were European. Another standard is applied because the artists are African. I don't think this is not a serious position to take.

Thomas Caron : But can you distance yourself from being South African when the subject matter of your work is involved in having grown up in this context? For example, your interests in power relationships?

SG : I think that it is necessary for South Africans start to position their discussions in more global context and to participate in global discussions. The things that I am interested in do not only exist in South Africa. There is a need for different sensitivities in different contexts but I think we also need to explore more fully how these can be relevant in a broader context.

TC : Is it possible to transport these issues to a global level when they are always very context specific?

SG : I', not interested in making generalisations but prefer to examine how these specifics might contribute to a larger debate. All this being said, I don't feel when I am working in Belgium, Santiago or India that I am working on South African issues.

PVC : As a way of extending this topic, in one of the earlier discussions during this exhibition, you were the only participant to say that an artist should take a position. This is not a self-evident thing nowadays. At the time, we were debating the possibility of some kind of revolutionary communication with regards to what is happening with the art market. One of the examples we were using is the fact that the market in Europe is becoming a kind of conservative bastion. If we connect the idea of context and position, firstly how you position yourself as an artist and, secondly, how do you see the position of the artist in general?

SG : I don't try to take a static or overriding position. But I do think that there is a need for artists to take some responsibility for the system in which they have chosen to work. As an artist one has agency and a voice along with access to a public. I think these things come with a sense of responsibility.

In relation to the market for instance, I don't feel I am outside of it. The art market is a reflection of a global capitalism. The latter's power is mirrored in the strength of the market. I think I have a responsibility to act within it order to provide some resistance to it and try to slow down the consumption of art I produce. Artworks that are openly critical of capitalism, for example the work of Santiago Sierra, are often rapidly absorbed into it. I would like it if there was a way of withholding something in the work, so that there is a part that can't be bought and sold. And I don't mean dematerialising the art object or any of those kinds of strategies. We all know that concepts are regularly bought and sold.

This is why I like your assertion, Philippe, that art is knowledge. One person can't own knowledge. You can own a piece but its knowledge will escape your control. I think this is a very beautiful idea.

TC : But how does your 21 Gun Salute for the Death of A Collector resist the market? You are selling something, in this case a 21 gun salute on the death of a collector.

SG : The work is part of the market and designed to be so. There is a literal withholding of the work in the sense that the collector can only have it work after he/she dies. But more importantly, it proposes a different relationship with the collector. The certificate by containing both of our details links us. Therefore, I have to take responsibility for my association with the collector and he/she must take on a different responsibility to the work. The collector is legally bound not to sell the work until after the completion of the performance of the 21 gun salute. It therefore cannot be an investment for the collector's personal gain during his lifetime.

PVC : In a way, I think that many artists hide behind their work. They hide behind the object or the painting, or whatever from the piece takes. I have the impression that you are not hiding behind your work but standing next to it. It is a very different approach to the things you make as an artist.

SG : I think this gets back to the question of responsibility. I see what you are describing as taking responsibility for my work. I always try and implicate myself in my practice and, on some level, the audience too. For instance, in my piece with Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, 3 Point Turn , I try to make the audience take responsibility for participating in the piece, even if their role is to merely play spectator to Sam Matentji, a former minibus-taxi driver, turning against the traffic in a busy one way road and do a 3 point. The action was viewed from the balcony of the Point Blank gallery.

I think this idea of responsibility is integral to Philippe's wanting to attempt to make a manifesto in the 21 st century.

PVC : The more time I spend here, I have become clearer in my thinking about why we are in Chile doing this project. One thing that has been interesting is that word 'manifesto' has become an obstacle. This is due to the fact that it is associated with a lot of canonical declarations relating to historical events or movements. This puts a burden on the manifestation of the endeavour. To write a manifesto at the beginning of the 21 st century, almost 100 years after the writing of the Futurist manifesto, means to consider that our world is developing incredibly fast and that we are not capable of dealing with it. There are technological revolutions happening in our daily lives as well as on a global level that need to be taken into account. Within this, the artist should take a position on a common ground.

It is important that the group of people involved in the project have nothing necessarily in common except that they are all artists in the year 2007. Of course, certain key points regarding the historical value of manifestos revolve around the idea of revolutionary potential. I think the Futurists probably wrote their manifesto together in 2 hours. Nowadays there seem to be no concept of solidarity around communal ideas. We live around ideas of individuality. The interesting thing is that, like the title of this exhibition, the project came into being in an organic way. It became not so much a manifesto but a manifesto about making a manifesto on the roles of curators and artist. But I believe that if we take this seriously it doesn't need to stop after the given time. I see this as a kind of necessity and also as kind of naive and even romantic utopian notion.

TC : But writing a manifesto becomes a very problematic issue once some of the participating artists think it is a naïve effort. How can we engage our self as a group on a political level when the people involved cannot find a common ground?

SG : For me what is really interesting about the whole process is that I think it definitely asks questions about our ability to engage with politics. We seem to have no contemporary language for politics in art. Our language is based in nostalgia, particularly of that of the 60s and 70s. We as artists can't seem to engage with politics in a contemporary way. This, I think, reflects the fact that society has become passive in relation to politics or scared to take a position. Of course, when the historical manifestos were written, it was a very idealistic time so it could be seen as naïve too but I don't think so. I think we need a manifesto that is able to occupy a more complex position which is appropriate for our time. Why can't we deal with the complexities of politics in an effective way? I don't think that taking a position is problematic because we don't have to be reductive in order to do so.

TC : Isn't the problem that some artists just don't want to take a political position? They are simply not interested in this.

SG : That seems to be part of the problem. We have lost touch with politics. Of course there have always been people who are not interested in politics but I think that society appears to be separating itself from politics, which seems nonsensical to me because the 2 are not separable in my head. We are surrounded by apathy and don't have ideological positions anymore. Just because a kind of belief has disappeared doesn't mean that platforms that attempt to deal with these questions cannot exist.

PVC : To say that it is naïve is the typical cynical attitude of our society. This attitude suggests that it is not worth trying. I hope that art is not an empty vessel.

TC : I am afraid for some people it is.

PVC : I think it has been a good exercise that everyone has had to reflect on their own responsibility within this whole thing. It is quite pointed that the project worked with the HISK and the academy of Munster along with the different universities of Santiago because it is about education. Educational institutions tend to have an idea of what a good artist is and how a good artist should behave. Education is a specific power relationship that forms people. The idea of the manifesto, which has traditionally been a dogmatic proposal with one voice and an answer, makes all the individuals reflect on their position as an artist and their responsibility in taking on this role in society.

Simon Gush is an artist currently based in Gent. Philippe Van Cauteren is initiator of the exhibition El Manifiesto de Santiago, and artistic director of SMAK (Museum for contemporary art, Ghent, Belgium). Thomas Caron is curator at SMAK (Museum for contemporary art, Ghent, Belgium). The discussion articulates some thoughts that could be part of the future manifesto.

For further information on the project: www.m100.cl

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