NRC — Do show the artistic porn film featuring Houellebecq
23 March 2023.
Art — No artist wants to surrender his sovereignty. That is what the case between KIRAC and Houellebecq is about, argues Arnold Heumakers.
What a bizarre project: a kind of artistic porn film featuring the French writer Michel Houellebecq and his wife. The Amsterdam artists’ collective KIRAC (Keep It Real Art Critics) came up with it, and the Houellebecqs agreed, contract and all. The contract entrusted full artistic control to Stefan Ruitenbeek of KIRAC. After seeing the trailer, Houellebecq began to regret it. He feels cheated by Ruitenbeek and his associates. Following a court case in France that Houellebecq lost, the matter is now before a judge in Amsterdam. A ruling will be issued on Tuesday. As an outsider, I do not have to decide who is right. That is the judge’s job.
Apart from the sensation and scandal, the issue is interesting for another reason. Two artists are facing each other here, with a work of art — jointly produced or otherwise — at stake. On one side is the world-famous writer; on the other, a much less famous artists’ collective that has spent several years challenging the art world with internet videos that are as entertaining as they are critical, and sometimes venomous: 26 ‘Episodes’ so far.
The scandal that has now arisen is nothing new for KIRAC. The same happened with earlier Episodes about the hollow pretensions of much contemporary art, about right-wing thinker Sid Lukkassen — who also appeared in a kind of porn film, initially of his own free will too — and in connection with protests at the Rietveld Academy over alleged racism and sexism. Themes that are familiar to Houellebecq as well.
Ruitenbeek and his group constantly seek out discomfort, friction and disruption, where delusion and reality collide and the boundaries between fact and fiction, between play and seriousness, evaporate. KIRAC makes art that can really hurt, with humour, mockery and self-mockery, but without any soothing dressings. You only realise how rare that is when you look at what usually passes for ‘critical’ or ‘abrasive’ art: nine times out of ten it deals with themes such as immigration, racism or climate, which are already prominent on the media agenda and invariably produce the same positions and conclusions in art. KIRAC charts a wholly independent, contrary course. In this respect, too, they have something of Houellebecq about them.
Refusing to relinquish control
Their conflict essentially comes down to one artist not wanting to be dependent on the other. Houellebecq wants a say in the film KIRAC is making about him, but KIRAC does not want to relinquish control. How unreasonable. But what artist does? Ever since the invention of aesthetic autonomy, the artist has been sovereign within his own work, and he does not wish to surrender that sovereignty to the state, religion or morality. Or, in this case, to a fellow artist.
That is precisely what distinguishes this case from a conflict between, say, an interviewer and an interviewee. In that situation, the relationship is unequal. Things are different here, despite the difference in fame and wealth. Here, art is fighting with itself. It is sometimes said that the best criticism of a work of art is another work of art. Does that also apply to criticism of an artist? To find out, the court should decide to let KIRAC go ahead. Perhaps that would be unfortunate for Houellebecq, a great writer in my eyes, who — bravely or foolishly — went looking for danger himself. For art, on the other hand, it could be exciting to see what form this confrontation between two headstrong artists takes. As a work of art, rather than a cage fight.
Arnold Heumakers is a literary critic.