"Insects of the former Soviet Union"

I laughed at the thought of successive generations of insects pledging allegiance to Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev – antennae raised to attention. Of course, these associations were not intended in the phrase, nonetheless, it does unlock the tragic irony of battle and bloodshed over land that cannot fundamentally be said to belong to anyone. What if non-human life made claim to the land, especially insects, who have occupied its surfaces longer than any human society? The trees, the moon, the birds, constant in their activity, among the flux of human ideological positions and conflicts.

I stumbled across this phrase on the Royal Entomological Society website. It was the title for an advert… "Here is the latest catalogue of insects which I can offer you from ex - USSR territories (Russia, Siberia, Far East, Altay Mts., Sayan Mts., Kirghizstan, Tadzhikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan etc.)." Posted by Dmitry Sobanim in March 2008. Perhaps significantly all prices are in U.S. dollars.... Many of the specimens are butterflies, flying creatures - which now dead and preserved, must be traded via mail, courtesy of a network of airlines.

One might consider the insects as a metaphor for the essentially apolitical, those who cannot, even symbolically, (rather than those who chose not to) participate in the machinations of politburos or local elections. The essentially apolitical might include new-born children or the senior citizen in the throes of Alzheimer’s. And yet, as we come to terms with the ecological impact of political/corporate ideologies it becomes clear that the indifferent are no less affected than anyone (or anything) else.

Stopper / Eitan Buchalter / 26.04.08

We entered the door one after the other. She pushed open the door ahead of me, only to find that the door could not open completely. There was a soft thud. We squeezed through the available space, turning our bodies sideways to slip into the building. Once inside we noticed a man standing on the other side of the door. He was still, standing upright, in non-descript dress, eyes open and a Buster-Keaton, deadpan expression. He had carefully positioned himself so as to be hit by the door as others tried to enter. Not so close to the door as to immediately block the arc of its movement, but enough for the person pushing the door to build some momentum in their action, but still unable able to complete that movement. We didn’t notice him immediately, his presence was slight. But once we did, we understood the soft thud was his body against the moving door. Our surprise converted to smiles of comprehension. We waited by the door to watch someone else try and enter the building. Eventually the door swung open and he was hit again, face not reacting. It was like watching a re-enactment of your own action by strangers, or your own activity from outside your body. Here damage was done to the man unintentionally; only after the act could you become aware of what you had done…what was on the other-side of the door. A forewarning was needed. A larger body of knowledge was needed to save his body. Allegorically the work communicates the danger of action without a sense of the whole picture, while recognising we can never have the whole picture. The work points to the daily damage done to the quiet, the passive, the weak, the silent, the invisible. At the time I was reminded of the anxiety I feel approaching my house after it has been raining heavily. After heavy rain, the snails come out, I walk on tiptoes, it is dark and wet, trying to avoid them - I scrutinize the ground, seemingly inevitably,I make one last step and I hear a crack. Once again I have stepped on a snail. I am temporarily crushed.

The building we had entered was called Vivid. A warehouse turned gallery in Birmingham. The man was called Eitan Buchalter, an artist contributing to a three day programme of work under the title Endurance (24 – 26th April 2008). Eitan had been behind the door all day. The endurance was his. Our encounter with the work is very fleeting. The experience of audience and artist are extremely different here. We only experience a sense of endurance through imagining what it would be like to be in his shoes all day as opposed to having endure ourselves.

Endure sounds so similar to enjoy. I point this out because of the conflicts which emerge when works which represent endurance are enjoyable to watch. The pain of the activity does not (nor necessarily has being designed to) translate. And so, all too often, consideration of the aesthetics of an activity takes primacy over the suffering engendered by that activity. Once in the building we needed to buy tickets for entry into the gallery space. At this point we were asked to remove our shoes, we were told they would be returned when we were ready to leave. We complied. We caught a glimpse of the shoes being whisked away into cupboard full of more shoes…presumably those of other gallery-goers.

Inside this exhibition space people walked without shoes. The floor was rough concrete, some of it smoothed over, it was uneven, its bumps and ridges easily felt through your socks. We saw films of Valie Export electrocuting herself, Ron Athey tearing his skin apart through sheets of glass, a man repeatedly spat upon, another man eating the leftovers of meals. A few hours later - on leaving the exhibition - we ask for our shoes back…inside we find slips of paper. They read: Endurance, Eitan Buchalter, 2008. This time it had been our turn to physically endure and the communication of the theme was all the better for it.