De Witte Raaf — Farewell to the institutions

Farewell to the institutions: KIRAC 24

Under a Sinking Sun

In 2018, KIRAC made a film about the Gerrit Rietveld Academie’s decision to cancel a KIRAC screening. It became a unique film because, in this case, those who had been cancelled managed to persuade those doing the cancelling to enter into a discussion on stage. It is a portrait of the confusion that arises when an alienated management with no affinity for art tries to limit the damage to its reputation by going along with the iconoclasm of a handful of art students so neglected and deprived of knowledge and prospects that the only meaningful relationship they can establish with their surroundings is by identifying a scapegoat. This complicated role as scapegoat proved highly productive for KIRAC, a starting point for an artwork about alienation, justice and nihilism. The episode was screened at De Balie cultural centre in Amsterdam, where audiences received it as an exciting, nuanced and, moreover, relevant work of art. The title Stigma was a prediction that is coming true: these days, a monstrous reputation always precedes us everywhere through the woke grapevine.

A reputation is something you play with wholeheartedly as an artist. It is an endless undertaking and, for that very reason, an inexhaustible source of artistic and unexpected possibilities. KIRAC’s reputation has led young people who, like KIRAC, had been cancelled for a variety of reasons to approach the collective in recent years. Maria was not allowed to screen the film she had made about her experiences of violence and sexual abuse at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie because it might distress other students. Jini, the heroine of Honeypot and now of Under a Sinking Sun, was cancelled too: after she broke up with a fellow philosophy student, he took revenge by falsely accusing her of rape before their student association, with the result that she was expelled without being given a chance to respond.

Then Juliaan Andeweg came forward: the artist accused by a group of women of assault, sexual assault and rape in a 2020 NRC article. KIRAC decided to take on this subject from the conviction that, as an artist, you are not worth a penny if you can only make art about subjects that are demonstrably innocent, and therefore harmless. Juliaan Andeweg has been accused but has not yet been found guilty or convicted, and this uncertain status makes him all the more frightening in the eyes of outsiders. People simply do not know where to place him. Amid this moral confusion, and about it, KIRAC is making a film, without being able or wishing to appeal to Juliaan Andeweg’s guilt or innocence: that judgment will, after all, be handed down in court, and even that does not, strictly speaking, rule out the existence of guilt or innocence. KIRAC examines social and cultural processes and makes them visible through performances. Welcoming Juliaan Andeweg on horseback at the screening of Honeypot was one such performance, which remains ambiguous and mysterious even to its makers as long as the artwork is unfinished. Thus, while KIRAC can explain how it works, it cannot yet say exactly what this performance means. For now, it is an expression of the frightening, indeterminate figure of Juliaan Andeweg. An apotropaic knight on horseback. Its full, complex and nuanced meaning will emerge in the future film. In this, KIRAC asks for trust in, and respect for, the democratic function of the artwork, which can reveal truths different from, let us say, a court judgment. Art concerns itself with the truths of human nature.

Incidentally, opponents of this way of working want to make it seem as though KIRAC operates without any understanding or knowledge of sexual violence. They assume that, if you had such knowledge, you would never make art about it in this way: that is, in a way that can be mistaken for glorification. But what if traumatic events sometimes only bear exposure to daylight in sublimated form, in a form that stands out as hard, beautiful and impenetrable against the feelings of weakness, pain and shame in which trauma usually presents itself? The resemblance between sublimation and glorification is not reprehensible; it is a psychological connection worth investigating. To say that it should not be allowed in this form is therefore also to say that it should not be allowed at all. Ironically, anyone who wants to deny this art a platform embodies the very patriarchy that suppresses every form of deviation by dictating how certain subjects may and may not be treated. This is precisely what feminists have resisted. They fought for women to be able to approach subjects in their own way; not to be forced by a figurative male gynaecologist to give birth lying on their backs because it gives him easier access.

I wrote the paragraphs above in the run-up to the premiere of KIRAC’s latest film, which was due to take place this coming Saturday, 2 April, at KIOSK, a gallery affiliated with the KASK art academy in Ghent. Under a Sinking Sun is a film made in collaboration with graduating KASK students. It is about the desires and illusions of young people coming of age in a world that is bidding farewell to the Enlightenment and its values; about the cheerful anticipation with which they face the possibilities of a setting sun.

Months before the premiere, KIOSK director Simon Delobel began receiving messages from complete strangers warning him of the danger posed by KIRAC. As time passed, the messages became more insistent and started coming from “well-meaning” colleagues. The pressure on Simon became so intense that he wrote in a press release that he was prepared to lose his job over Under a Sinking Sun.

Somehow, Simon’s and the students’ enthusiasm gave me the feeling that the modest history of 2018 would not repeat itself. That feeling proved utterly naïve when, last night, KASK dean Filip Rathé overrode Simon’s autonomy and abruptly cancelled the premiere. The entire KASK campus will be closed on Saturday, 2 April, because, the management says, it “cannot guarantee safety”. Once again, a management caves in to the demands of anonymous, inflammatory collectives that threaten on social media to throw faeces, never enter into discussion, and above all want discussion in general to be eradicated. If the malady of the present age is people’s inability to distinguish the literal from the figurative, then the dissolution of the premiere of a film about dissolution makes a fitting conclusion. Nevertheless, I find it a sad outcome.

With this, KIRAC bids a definitive farewell to the institutions, which foster a corrupt climate in which no art can flourish. Art resides in the hand that makes it, not in the hand that stifles it.

Kate Sinha

KIRAC — Keeping It Real Art Critics