Is KIRAC Art or a Feeble Joke? Its “Keeping It Real” Remains Elusive

The news that French writer Michel Houellebecq was involved in a lawsuit because the Dutch art collective KIRAC wanted to use pornographic footage of him in a film surprised many lovers of literature. On Tuesday, the Dutch judge hearing the application for interim relief ruled in KIRAC's favour. Houellebecq refuses to accept the decision.

KIRAC provokes strong reactions, but why do its members call themselves artists? What is artistic about KIRAC 27, a porn film with Houellebecq? Or is the whole thing one big, feeble joke?

French television channels could scarcely believe it. Dutch filmmaker Stefan Ruitenbeek, the man said to have filmed Houellebecq having sex with a young woman, did not live in a canal house but in a “banlieue” that some Dutch viewers recognised as the Bijlmer. That was where Ruitenbeek was editing the film. In front of the French camera, he constantly held a glass of red wine, even as he walked down the street. “This is French wine, good wine!” he said. He was taking the French for a ride. At the same time, he says he takes his own artistic practice, and Houellebecq's, very seriously.

Irritation and anger

KIRAC stands for Keeping It Real Art Critics. Ruitenbeek, born in 1982, and his partner Kate Sinha, born in 1988, founded the collective in 2016. They make films that resemble documentaries, often accompanied by lightly ironic commentary from Ruitenbeek in an exaggeratedly resonant voice. In their first films, the two did indeed behave as critical observers of art. They discussed and philosophised about exhibitions, socially engaged artists and phenomena in the art world such as arts funding and gallery owners.

But their method soon began provoking irritation and anger as well. Right-wing philosopher Sid Lukkassen responded to an appeal to have sex with a “left-wing” student for KIRAC's camera. He said he wanted to resolve polarisation in this way, but when he was rejected on camera and the footage was to be shown, he tried to stop the film. Those conversations also made it into the finished film.

When KIRAC had artist Julian A., who has been accused of rape and assault, parade around on a horse at a presentation, women accused the collective of celebrating rape culture. A film in which someone has sex with a left-wing student, and putting an artist accused of rape on a horse, sound cheap or childish. KIRAC plays with that indignation.

Art should chafe

Some people believe this does indeed form part of a much larger artistic idea. Among them are the patrons who donate money to KIRAC each month to watch its films online. Their reasoning is that art is, in principle, about everything, including things that are unpleasant. Art must be allowed to chafe, in their view. And that friction often concerns sexual and ethical boundaries.

In the nineteenth century, Édouard Manet shocked the public with a flesh-and-blood naked woman in his painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. A century later, photographer Andres Serrano caused controversy with works such as Piss Christ, combining images of Christ with urine, blood and semen. Representatives of the Church tried to prevent galleries from showing his work.

Discomfort

Unlike Manet and Serrano, however, who made tangible artworks that can also be seen “simply” as beautiful images, KIRAC makes films that are not easily regarded as aesthetically “beautiful”. The discomfort regularly bursts off the screen. It is a discomfort in which people of integrity who are less articulate or socially awkward come off worst. As is now happening to Houellebecq, an artist who has himself always played games with sexual taboos, truth and the boundaries between good and evil.

In a 2021 interview, Ruitenbeek explained that KIRAC began with an abstract idea about art. He looked at Rembrandt, Velázquez and Orson Welles and concluded that good art had to bring something new. If you made a painting in the style of Degas today, it would not be a good artwork.

The “Movie Talk” video from June 2022 offers further clarity. In it, Ruitenbeek and Sinha spend an hour and a half discussing Balzac, who shows society in all its ugliness. They identify with Balzac's character Lucien, who has great romantic ambitions as an artist but writes pulp stories to make ends meet.

Sinha sees a parallel between KIRAC and Balzac: they too are involved in society and do not want to focus solely on the cultural world. They want to show the reality of the present rather than idealised beauty. If that provokes people, and the provocation attracts attention, so much the better. But it is not an end in itself.

Reality shows presenting reactions as “real”

That last claim is open to question. Unlike Manet, Serrano or Houellebecq, who create their own fictions and thereby provoke a response, KIRAC uses real reactions and emotions to create its own fiction. In NRC, social scientist Linda Duits compared KIRAC's method to reality television, in which producers deliberately put participants under pressure to elicit reactions and then present those reactions as “real”. That causes irritation.

But is it really so real? One of the most painful scenes in KIRAC's latest film, Under a Sinking Sun, shows artist Tarik Sadouma at Ghent's art academy demolishing the work of Chris Houben, a rather shy student, in front of several people and the KIRAC camera. A subsequent interview revealed that Houben is a great admirer of KIRAC and had personally invited the collective to comment harshly on his work.

Whether the Houellebecq affair is also different from what it appears to be remains a question. A lawsuit is a step beyond a negative assessment at an art academy. And Sadouma, the artist who often appeared in KIRAC films as a sadist and pimp, has left the collective because of its treatment of Houellebecq. For all we know, that too is part of KIRAC's plan. In any event, “keeping it real” is a description to which the collective has given an entirely new meaning.