Introduction
CIVIC VIRTUE is an artists' collective based in Amsterdam.
The collective has 4 core members -Geirthrudur Finnbogadottir Hjorvar, Ruchama Noorda, Gijsbert Wouter Wahl and Brian Mckenna-, But we also seek active collaboration with other artists for each project.
CIVIC VIRTUE is best understood through its interest in signs and symbols.
It is an active engagement with meaning as a fundamental motive for the creation of our environment, if not the whole of our reality. A main focal point of CIVIC VIRTUE has therefore been the function of signs within bodies of government. This ranges from secret societies to a spectrum of revolts, starting from Spartacus and into the modern era. Notable examples being the many peasant revolts that took place in medieval and renaissance Europe, and up to the Romantic wave of 1848, which also includes the "Five days of Milan".
CIVIC VIRTUE is interested in the way governments are constituted by organisations like a body is constituted by organs. Ergo there are bodies of government, which are considered positive for their possibilities for democratic representations, while a body without organs may be considered a system of control in the most negative aspect of what government may evolve into.
Each political group, in its attempts to overthrow a ruling class, has always had to deal with the dynamics of its own members to make such a revolt possible.
But the connotation of these presumptions tend not to be thought through.
While it is a common truism that such groups are ruled by interpersonal contradictions, it doesn't necessarily call for the cynicism of a pragmatic compromise. It can be replaced by a more joyful sense of polemics, which ideally should animate all artistic pursuit.
Beheadings, however, and thoughts on the physicality of the nature of power, quickly became a habit of us. These ideas were built on such motifs as the Marianne-figure and the guillotine as symbols for overthrowing an ailing hierarchy. Thus, the idea of the beheading contains a potent symbol for altered social structures. It is the symbology of revolt that gets reproduced at the thought of displacing the head from the body.
The Definition of the Neoclassical
CIVIC VIRTUE defines itself as a Neoclassic Revival. It is an historical style dictating the mood of art and fashion, in a period that coincided roughly with the age of enlightenment. Neo-Classicism was the dominating trend of the 18th and early 19th centuries. What is most interesting about the style is how it is built on recycled ideas and motifs from the past. Here we would have a century's worth of small movements within neoclassicism, all of which were inspired by the re-discovery of artefacts and styles from past eras. The most symptomatic examples of this being Greek columns, and Roman frescos.
And so it is that CIVIC VIRTUE chose a theme: Neoclassicism. It allows for nearly endless variations when it comes to historical motifs. Each reference to the past has the possibility of becoming a modern-day revival, rather than remaining an isolated reflection, focused solely on what once was. This allows CIVIC VIRTUE to joyfully delve into the whole of everything that had ever happened in history. And perhaps more importantly: to find ideas and ideologies that are worth recuperating.
Today we would like to introduce CIVIC VIRTUE’s Grand Tour of the intestines. This is of course built on the neoclassical idea of the Grand Tour: an 18th century tradition of North-European aristocrats traveling south, for the sake of their “cultural education”.
In the spirit of the Grand Tour, we will approach Europe from the perspective of a founding myth: this is the Grand Tour of Europa - divine moon goddess from Phoenicia. As Europa and the moon goddess are the same thing, we are impelled to see the Tour of Europa as a tour of her digestive system: we will enter through her mouth, spend some time in the stomach, check out some organs such as the liver and kidneys, before delving into Europe’s large intestines.
What we have here is the multi-purpose use of the intestines as a drive for our narrative pursuits. The intestines are a metaphor for:
- The river systems of Europe, which were the original foundation for travel and commerce on the continent.
- Digestion as thought" in the Nietzschean sense. This is a metaphor for digestion as thinking, as concepts may be subjected to the biological limitations of form, similar to the extend food can be useful to the body.
- Intestines are formed like a maze, and thereby a metaphor for the notions of narrative in the universal sense of linear progress. It is where food becomes a metaphor for information as it moves along the digestive tract.
Concepts present themselves in the form of organs such as a liver, kidneys and pancreas, which have the ability to purify and distill elements from within food, and make it useful to the body. But they only use the nourishment appropriate to themselves, and disregard the rest. This is similar to a mental filter which produces ideology as it is selective about the information it takes in.
Furthermore, the digestive system provides a well-formed analogy as it bares an uncanny resemblance to a labyrinth. As a labyrinth, it is the embodiment of a complex and heroic journey filled with trials of endurance, strength and wit.
In addition, the digestive tract looks rather similar to the human brain. And so the Journey, the Digestive Tract, the Labyrinth and the Brain, all become interchangeable with each other.
The origins of the labyrinth may be found in an Ancient myth of a labyrinth at Knossos, where the Minotuar lives. In the first version of the myth Europa conceives a child with Zeus – who had disguised himself as a bull. The child of this union was Minos. In the second version of the myth Minos's wife conceives a child with a divine bull. The child of this union is the minotaur, who went on to live in the labyrinth, safely hidden from the rest of society. The reason that Minos put his stepson in the labyrinth, was perhaps not because the Minotaur was a man-eating monster, but on the contrary, because Minos was ashamed of the affair his wife had with the holy bull. It was, after all, completely the responsibility of Minos, since the gods were punishing him for not having sacrificed the animal in the first place.
It is therefore that we doubt the physical existence of such a labyrinth and propose that it is an allegory for the psychological lay-out of Minos's mind, in which the Minotaur is that monster that lives in everyones head: shame! Yet the myth of the Minotaur and of King Minos both seem to be spin-offs from earlier forms of bull worship. If it is an allegory, it is necessarily an allegory about the connection between propaganda and the imagination. We can only assume that the accusation of bestiality was intended as slander by a new ruling class -the Greeks-, towards the ones that had once predominated them, -the Minoans- whom seem to have worshiped bulls, and happily danced upon them.
Rumination
Rumination is a modern-day metaphor for the melancholically inclined, and is inspired by cows. When a cow ruminates, it chews grass, swallows it, digests it, regurgitates the cud, chews it more, and swallows it again. In english,“to ruminate” means to think repeatedly about events from the past. That is: the psychological act of ruminating, wherein the brain and the digestive system become interchangeable once again.
After all, ruminations go hand-in-hand with Neoclassicism. It is the essence of a memory that had been recycled, just as styles keep re-emerging in history, only to become forgotten once again. These cycles only hasten in today's production-based mode of industry, but the question remains: where does the cud go?
The Fordist Model Of Production
The model at hand is an allegorical one. With it we complete the cycle and to turn our attention to the modern era, and more specifically, to the manufacturing process for the construction of cars, now known as the Fordist model. This model was built upon the idea of the deconstruction of a cow.
The factory system is an extension of the time-honoured work of the butcher. That is to say, the automobile is put together in the same systematic way that cows are taken apart – only in reverse. Instead of a biological map, it is a map that sketches out the production value of the cow. This map applies to the principles of meat production. The butcher's map is the schematic deconstruction of a cow. Unlike maps of the digestive system, such a diagram ignores concepts of linear progress. It views the cow as a static diagram, wherein all parts are are shown simultaneously, and in isolation from one another - hovering in the void.
CIVIC VIRTUE takes this as an analogy of the modern era, wherein the phenomena presented seem completely devoid of history. What all this may imply is that if meat is time, digestion is the flow and progress of events.
Conclusion
CIVIC VIRTUE is not only interested in, but perhaps even concerned with the future. Or, more precisely, concerned about a future that risks being devoid of utopian ideals. Such a future would of course be one without progress; and life without progress can merely be called the passing of time.
And so it is for the sake of the future that CIVIC VIRTUE goes on a Grand Tour, and thereby submits itself to the age-old rituals of travel. It is a ritual that aims at a resurrection of the whole body instead of being yet another revival of disembodied limbs. It is more akin to a voodoo enchantment of corpses than a history lesson in anatomy. And as such, it is a process where travel is interchangeable with an understanding of digestion. Each destination may stand for an organ in significant relation to the rest of the body.
CIVIC VIRTUE travels along the labyrinth of Europa's intestines, as they flow in a southbound motion, zig-zagging back and forth past the major sites and monuments of interest, in the unorganized style of the small intestines. The exhibitions on the journey will serve as a house of memory, and assimilate the experiences and adventures which CIVIC VIRTUE will have undergone during the tour. CIVIC VIRTUE aims to be fully digested by Europe, after which it will reconnect each of the atoms it once was, to resurface like the phoenix from its ash.
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