Jonas Staal: Propagandas

Using four case-studies, the Jonas Staal exhibition unfolds around the architectural aesthetic, seen as a model of representing a political thought that has witnessed often surprising changes over the years.

Jonas Staal: Propagandas
Last January’s editorial of Sicilia Libertaria, the anarchist magazine for liberation and internationalism, reads: “...an independent Sicily can only be a Sicily with no state...”, “in several parts of the world where attempts at radical social change are in progress – Chiapas and Rojava to the fore – they are questioning the national State and favouring projects that promote a society built from the bottom up via collective structures and widespread self-management.
Jonas Staal, "Propagandas", installation view, Laveronica arte contemporanea, 2016
Top and above: Jonas Staal, "Propagandas", installation view, Laveronica arte contemporanea, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Laveronica arte contemporanea
The writer was Pippo Gurrieri, a renowned Sicilian anarchist with a big moustache and a true heart who continues to publish and circulate Sicilia Libertaria. He talked about what he writes about in the magazine’s headquarters in Ragusa on the Saturday morning before Easter. In the company of the artist Jonas Staal and the curator Matteo Lucchetti, he took the floor and showed uncommon wisdom as he narrated the history of this centre and his concept of propaganda, democracy and parliament.

It is therefore no coincidence that the vision behind “Propagandas”, a Jonas Staal solo exhibition at the Laveronica gallery in Modica, originated here in the small but precious archive of Sicilian militancy, inspired by the revolutionary Maria Occhipinti who to the cry of “We’re not going!” triggered the Ragusan revolt against the call to arms in 1945.

Set out on the three floors of a tall, narrow house in Via Garibaldi are photographs taken in Rojava, adding new faces to the old anarchist posters and historical documents featuring revolutionary and propagandist (precisely) iconography. On the walls is the Anatomy for a Revolution: Rojava series (2015), which visits the independence of Rojava, a Kurdish region in northern Syria that was declared autonomous in 2011. It offers glimpses and the aesthetics of everyday life and public meetings, a tool adopted by democratic federalism and come to symbolise the battle against ISIS.

Jonas Staal, "Propagandas", installation view, Laveronica arte contemporanea, 2016
Jonas Staal, "Propagandas", installation view, Laveronica arte contemporanea, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Laveronica arte contemporanea

This, in fact, is the starting point: is it possible to separate art and propaganda?

Using four case-studies, the Jonas Staal exhibition – the main corpus of which is concentrated in the Laveronica gallery in Modica – unfolds around the architectural aesthetic, seen as a model of representing a political thought that has witnessed often surprising changes over the years.

Jonas Staal’s work has long been structured around the relationship between art and politics, and is summed up in the concept of “propagandas” – in the plural as the word can adopt different meanings for the diverse forms of power that can influence the aesthetic of cultural production.

During revolutions, culture and art are forced to go through a redefinition process but the core issue is always centred on the same dichotomy: how can politics free art from propaganda and how can art free politics? Rojava is, perhaps, currently where these reflections are being manifested to the maximum.

For a couple of years or so, the artist and his organization New World Summit were commissioned by the autonomous government to design and build the construction of a permanent building that will host the parliament’s activities, giving rise to a new agora where democratic federalism can plant its roots.

Jonas Staal, "Propagandas", installation view, Laveronica arte contemporanea, 2016
Jonas Staal, "Propagandas", installation view, Laveronica arte contemporanea, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Laveronica arte contemporanea
A public place open to all and circular in shape, like the globe of a new world, is an expression of the fundamental principles of the revolution: secularism, gender equality, communitarianism and social ecology. This operation was generated by the New World Summit, an artistic and political organisation founded by Staal in 2012 which develops “temporary parliaments” on a large scale for stateless or blacklisted political groups. The architecture (a beautiful model of which is displayed) is the source of a stateless democracy, to use the term coined by the Kurdish revolutionary Abdullah Öcalan. It indicates a new model based on the principles of autonomous government, gender equality and a shared economy.
Another example of comparative architecture is Nosso Lar, Brasília, 2014, presented in a model and two superimposed masterplans. One is of the city of Nosso Lar (Our Home) created by the spiritist medium Chico de Xavier. In a 1944 book, he imagined a “spirit colony” designed for the spirits of dead Portuguese settlers. The other masterplan is of Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer’s Brasilia, born ideally out of the anti-colonial drive and a symbol of independence from Portugal. Although opposites, modernism and spiritism present unsettling similarities in the urban composition of the two cities.
Jonas Staal, "Propagandas", installation view, Laveronica arte contemporanea, 2016
Jonas Staal, "Propagandas", installation view, Laveronica arte contemporanea, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Laveronica arte contemporanea

Forging the link between architecture and ideology is the gallery’s unusual “grotto” containing Closed Architecture (2011), a rendering of a prison based on a degree dissertation project by the strongly nationalist Dutch MP Fleur Agema. As a young student, she proposed a model of prison life divided into four different stages, aimed at rehabilitating prisoners and turning them into productive members of society.

Staal sees architecture as a language that often physically reproduces the development of global economies and their social and political implications in the reconstruction of the social fabrics of Nations. Monument to Capital (2014-16) represents the capitals of high finance via the world’s tallest skyscrapers. The video was inspired by the Barclays Capital skyscraper index and shows, in graph form, an inversely proportional correlation between the construction of the world’s future tallest skyscrapers and the emergence of a new global financial recession.

Jonas Staal, "Propagandas", installation view, Laveronica arte contemporanea, 2016
Jonas Staal, "Propagandas", installation view, Laveronica arte contemporanea, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Laveronica arte contemporanea
The concept and image of the monument is strongly linked to architecture. Kobane endured an interminable siege that devastated the city in late 2014 after which the Kurd militias liberated it from ISIS. The city’s destroyed main square then became the subject of much debate as the self-run government sought to understand whether and how to construct a monument that would fully convey this bloody battle for freedom. They decided that not a new monument but the ruins themselves could best express the struggle that united men and women under one ideal. Art is often asked to portray the unportrayable but this choice erases all doubts and responds in part to the questions raised by “Propagandas”.
© all rights reserved

until 13 June 2016
Jonas Staal – “Propagandas”
curated by Matteo Lucchetti
Laveronica Arte Contemporanea, Modica
with the collaboration of Sicilia Libertaria

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