Incredible news. The Neighbourhood Association in Borja (home of the infamous Ecce Homo) announces a WORLDWIDE COMPETITION in honour of Cecilia Giménez, the woman who “restored” the original artwork. Take part if you find this as funny as we do.
The Curatorship Crew.
THE 2ND PLASTIC ARTS WORLDWIDE COMPETITION “CECILIA GIMENEZ”
The competition is open to artists of any nationality. The artworks entered should be previously unpublished and should be original artwork based on the figure of Ecce Homo, freestyle, whether it be painting, sculpture, photopraghy, engraving or any other artistic technique that the author may consider appropriate.
The work awarded by the Judging Panel will deserve the honour of being displayed in a preferential place in the Santuario de Misericordia in Borja. The result of the competition will be announced in the Santuario de Misericordia in Borja, in the place and manner to be announced and determined in good time.
The winner of the competition will receive a prize consisting of an amount of 2,000 Euros.
The three finalists will be offered the opportunity to exhibit their work in 2014 within the Program of Cultural Activities of the Neighbourhood Association of Santuario de Misericordia 2010, Borja.
The aims of the contest are:
– Give people from all around the globe interested in the case of the Ecce Homo in Santuario de Misericordia in Borja the opportunity to participate and contribute to the creation of a single space in the world.
– Create the first Ecce Homo monothematic Plastic Arts Museum in the world located in the Santuario de Misericordia in Borja.
– Promote a non-profit organization in order to manage the revenues generated by the museum, targeting them to the research and assistance of people suffering from severe disabilities.
After the unexpected success of our first excursion to Getxo Photo and the Ecce Mono of Borja, we decided to continue the series with an even more exotic destination. We left our vessel safely anchored near the South Korean coast, just off the Demilitarized Zone with North Korea, a 4km-wide strip of No Man’s Land that divides the two countries. In the fifty years of cold war, the DMZ has become a Natural Reserve where Bambi and his mother life peacefully between Dragon’s teeth, tanks and missiles, as shown in Jungnam Ko’s photographic series.
Unfortunately, the North Koreans did not give us permission to land on their territory; despite the visual material I had provided to prove my loyalty to the Cause. Alas, we headed inland, in order to reach the second largest city of the country, Daegu. Daegu is more or less pronounced like the “Accent deguuuu”, a little rooftop that the Frenchmen construct over some letters, without any other reason than to confuse those who do not belong to their Grande Nation. Anyways, let’s get to the pôint: Daegu hosted these days its 4th Photography Biennial, and we were able to visit some of its finest exhibitions, such as Karen Irevine’s Repositioned Personal and Natalie Herschdorfer’ The Youth Code!
The Portfolio Review was an interesting opportunity to recruit fresh blood, and was won by Ji Hyun Kwon, a very talented photographer from Seoul who lives in Germany now. While her already quite known series Dormitory shows the coexistence of Korean students in shared rooms, her new work, The Guilty, treats her own sense of guilt for becoming an artist (while her parents wanted her to become a lawyer). No wonder she was invited to join the Captain’s table and chosen as my personal Guide for the research field trip to Gangnam.
Gangnam, the “district south of the river” is one of Seoul’s most fashionable and trendy locations. It is well-known among Koreans, and metaphorically used much in the same way we mention Beverly Hills, when we want to talk about the rich and beautiful. And, it has gained an awful lot of attention outside of Korea, due to the song Gangnam Style, performed by K-Pop singer and performer PSY. The song is unforgettable, but it is really the mind-boggling video that has set the records: 343,579,271 viewers on YouTube, as of today. It is likely that this new world record will be broken very soon by another home video of a lazy cat or a baby that says “No” to everything, however, Gangnam Style has risen some serious questions: While most Westerners take the video (and the song) as a bizarre jewel of oriental Wanna-Be-Entertainment, South-Koreans understand the song as a hidden critique to an ostentatious lifestyle that has taken control of a vast part of the peninsula’s population. In the well-researched article Gangnam Style, Dissected, author Max Fisher analyzes the background story of the video, which lampoons the self-importance and ostentatious wealth of the tony Seoul neighborhood.What seems to be just a satire about Gangnam itself turns out to be about people outside Gangnam, who pursue their dream to be one of those Gangnam residents with big cars, fancy dresses and operated noses.
Accordingly, the average Korean household carries credit card debt worth a staggering 155 percent of their disposable income, and there are nearly five credit cards for every adult: “South Koreans have been living on credit since the mid-1990s, first because their country’s amazing growth made borrowing seem safe, and then in the late 1990s when the government encouraged private spending to climb out of the Asian financial crisis”. Limitless credits for those who cannot afford it? Sounds somehow familiar, from our side of the shore!
No wonder that their suspicious neighbor in the North didn’t hesitate to make a video parody, mocking South Korean presidential candidate Park Geun-hy and her father, Park Jung-hee, South Korea’s former dictator. Park, credited with overseeing South Korea’s rapid economic rise, still is a controversial figure in his country because of his dictatorial rule. The video was posted to the official North Korean government website Uriminzokkiri, a true masterpiece in the style of the cold war propaganda.
South-Koreans see the phenomenon ambiguously. While they are proud of their country’s economic and cultural achievements, and see no reason why this should change (a recurrent situation before any crisis), they also are aware of the somehow perverted redefinition of cultural and social values. In a personal experiment, I tried emulating some of Psy’s moves on a busy street at rush hour in the Gangnam destrict, in order to see the public’s reaction. The outcome was two-fold. First result: I nearly got run over. Second result: The ones that did NOT try to run me over, seemed to find it funny to see a Westerner do the moves, and showed themselves somehow proud of the song’s success among the Long-Noses. The experiment’s success had to be celebrated in one of the trendy Gangnam Clubs, the ones that Psy and his friends are not allowed into, for not belonging to the caste of the rich and beautiful. Needless to say that for me, getting in was no problem… even it meant entering the venue through the window of the Lady’s Toilet. Oh, what a night!
But every shore excursion comes to its end, so we leave behind the land of spicy cabbage and slick metallic chop sticks, in order to get back en route. Yet, not without mentioning a project that illustrates the up-to-date urgency of our two first land excursions, for the documentation of contemporary life and art: On a truly profound level of critique, the video Ecce Mono goes Gangnam style, connects both phenomena, in a quite conceptual, yet visually pleasing manner. What we have here is an intriguing chef-d’oeuvre of contemporary media art that will be remembered by generations ahead, for its elegance and poignant socio-political meaning. Bravô from Le Capitain!
After two years on board of the vessel, we thought it was high time to put on our feet on solid ground and dare a shore excursion. And which highly celebrated work of contemporary visual culture would be more fitting than the Ecce Mono (#eccemono for those of you who structure their lives according to daily trending topics) in the Spanish village of Borja.
Our inland expedition started from Getxo, where we left the Ship, anchored safely in the harbor, quite near to Marcos Lopez’ Sireno, and after visiting GetxoPhoto, which runs under the title “In Praise of Childhood” this year. Our journey southwards led us through the dry plains of Aragon, until reaching the village of Borja, and its Sanctuary of Mercy church, home of the now-famous Ecce Mono fresco, a partly restored 19th century mural painting depicting our Lord, which has garnered worldwide attention in the past… mmmh… weeks, actually.
Inside the sanctuary, we found ourselves in company of many other admirers, and had to stand in line for some time, before being able to appreciate the masterpiece. A well invested time, as it would turn out, as the privilege of entering a face-to-face dialogue with the savior is really quite different from seeing it on a screen. Not only can you truly appreciate the work of Doña Cecilia Giménez, the 85 year old artist, who painted over the fresco in an attempt to restore it, but you can also see that the colors she used are about to fall off the wall soon, especially the ones used for the ill-fitting tunic, which seem to come from her personal collection of vernis à ongles (commonly known as Nail Varnish).
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Of course, we also took our photo in front of the chef d’oeuvre, without flash, in order to avoid any deterioration of the piece. After all, we are professionals.
Our first shore excursion ended with a stroll through the Monastery, which is as empty and boring as it has been for many years, before the Ecce Mono hype, which has caused a new appreciation of the ancient trade of Restoration. Maybe from now on, people will start to actually think twice before restoring monuments, and consults specialists that have been trained for years to take the right decision. Or maybe not, and it will just become another anecdote in the age of social media. Anyways, we were there when it was all happening, a story which we will be able to tell our grandchildren, in case they should still be interested in such old fashioned phenomena as twitter and facebook…
Now we are back on board, riding the waves of the Seven Seas of Visual Culture, and looking forward to the next Shore Excursion. Stay tuned!
PS: Here are some of our favorite images from the #eccemono Internet Phenomenon and the resulting real-world objects…
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