Peter Friedl

In his film installation Report (2016), Peter Friedl explores the permeability of language and identity boundaries. The source text is “A Report to an Academy,” Franz Kafka’s 1917 short story about the ape Red Peter’s becoming human—a parable about assimilation, which has been nearly buried under the burden of interpretation and constant homage. The only setting in Peter Friedl’s complex film project, seemingly conform with classical dramatic theory, is the completely emptied stage of the National Theater in Athens, designed by German architect Ernst Ziller in the late nineteenth century. A total of two dozen actors of various origins and backgrounds appear one by one: women, men, children, almost always alone, but occasionally in pairs. A few of them make recurring appearances through the course of the film. In front of a camera sharply focused on them, they all recite by heart extracts from Kafka’s monologue-esque text in their mother tongue or a language of their choice: Arabic, English, Farsi, French, Greek, Swahili, Kurdish, Russian. German, the original language of the canonical Kafka piece, is deliberately absent. Friedl’s film, doing away with subtitles, comes to life through the presence and charisma of the actors and through the precise and thoughtful editing. With some omissions and variations, the work remains faithful to the original narrative throughout the fragmented polyphony of languages and gestures. It features predominantly non-actors, mostly protagonists of the current global refugee and migration movements, but the Greek actress Maria Kallimani is also part of the cast. The long process of casting took place in Athens.

Commissioned and produced by documenta 14

Peter Friedl’s Rehousing, project is the result of the artist’s interest in finding artistic solutions to problems of modernism that have never been fully resolved in the course of the movement’s history. It consists of minutely detailed, scale models of housing projects which are case studies for a mental geography of different forms and modes of modernity. Among the ten models showcased in Taipei Biennial 2016 four of them are new works: one of the few derelict buildings left from Vann Molyvann’s “100 Houses” project completed in 1967 for workers of the National Bank of Cambodia in Tuk Thia, Phnom Penh (101); a dingzihu or Chinese “nail house,” an architectural landmark in times of rampant redevelopment and social change (Holdout); a dome from Drop City, the short lived counterculture community founded in Southern Colorado in 1965, which transformed Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic design principles into a DIY version (Dome); and a recently installed container home from a refugee camp in Jordan, a case study of contemporary political architecture (Azraq). The other six models were produced between 2012 and 2014: the artist’s parental home in Austria (Gründbergstraße 22); the private residence of Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi (Uncle Ho); the modernist utopia of Luigi Piccinato’s Villa tropicale, a prototype colonial house designed during the Fascist era but never constructed (Villa Tropicale); a naturalistic model of an anonymous slave cabin on the Evergreen Plantation in Louisiana (Evergreen); philosopher Martin Heidegger’s hut in the Black Forest Mountains of Southern Germany (Heidegger); and a model of one of the shacks built by African refugees in Berlin and demolished by the police in April 2014 (Oranienplatz).

Bilbao Song was filmed on the empty stage of the Serantes Theatre in Santurtzi, near Bilbao. In static tableaux vivants staged specially for the camera, Friedl’s film captures the process of a phantasmagorical picture production, in this case inspired by Basque history. Those involved in these tableaux included professional actors and special guests, like Julen Madariaga (lawyer, politician, former co-founder of ETA) or the popular clown duo Pirritx and Porrotx. The starting point was the painting Henry IV and the Spanish Ambassador (1817) by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Other references to Basque history are El Paria Castellano by Juan de Echevarria (1917), El Orden by Gustavo de Maeztu (1918–19), the Tríptico de la Guerra by Aurelio Arteta (1937), and Soldado y Mulata by Víctor Patricio Landaluze, who was born in Bilbao and migrated to Cuba in 1850. The only action that takes place on the stage is the live interpretation of the “Bilbao Song” from Happy End, an unsuccessful musical comedy by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill—a performance with no text, just a local pianist and a woman accordion player.

Theory of Justice (1992–2010) is based on pictures from newspapers and magazines, which Friedl has been collecting and exhibiting since 1992. As the art of observation, every theory draws a picture of the world. But what happens if the images themselves want to become theory? The title refers to the attempt at renewing social contract theory undertaken by the U.S. philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002). A Theory of Justice (1971) and the subsequent restatement Justice as Fairness are classic examples of a political liberalism that believes in the possibility of a well-ordered society and the overarching consensus of its members. The organization of the material in specially designed showcases follows the chronology of what is depicted rather than the actual date of publication. Friedl’s archive proposes a new sort of pictorial justice in relation to originality, history and context.

In his video Liberty City (2007), Friedl addresses a standard historical scene. On the night of 17 December 1979, the (black) motorcyclist Arthur McDuffie was stopped by (white) cops on the corner of North Miami Avenue and 38th Street and beaten to death. When the accused policemen were acquitted five months later, riots broke out in Liberty City. It was the darkest moment in the history of Miami. Desolate Liberty City haunts voyeuristic reality TV series in emulation of Homicide. Friedl inverts the dramatic structure: In his nocturnal scene staged and filmed on site, the (white) cop is beaten up. The looped and uncut sequence appears like filmed by an eyewitness. In fact, it is a meticulously constructed, dramatic study. The film was shot in the streets of the Liberty Square Housing Project, a residential complex built during the Roosevelt era in the 1930s for African American residents. To keep the black and white communities separated, a wall was erected on the eastern boundary of Liberty Square, the remains of which can still be seen today. Friedl’s short loop is an homage to the community of Liberty City—epic theater in the genre of documentary aesthetics.