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T R A C K M EA P o r t r A i t A s D i A l o g u e

W o r D s & i M A g e s b y

A n g E l i K A B ö C K

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As an artist, my interest is directed at forms of expressions, practices, rituals, or signs in various contexts aiming to set different contemporary modes of perception and representation of the individual – which I have come to regard as forms of portrayal – side by side. This has resulted in a series of “(self)portrayals,” for which I have applied a dialogical strategy by placing myself as the subject to be negotiated, studied and represented through interpretations by my fellow human beings and which has been at the core of my artistic practice for more than a decade. I call this artistic research and method “Portrait as Dialogue,” as it challenges and expands the pa-rameters of the conceptions and conventions of “portraiture” by applying a new methodology based in primary socio-cultural fieldwork. The “Dia-logical Portraits” are intended as a dual relation between both objectivities and subjectivities within the order of representation, and represent both a crossover and reversal of the traditional roles of the artist on one hand and model on the other.

The overarching aim of my activity is to re-think the Western conception of portraiture through the investigation of specific non-Western and sub-cultural modes that prioritise different codes and social processes of cul-tural production – modes that do not privilege the gaze in the production. The research strategy draws on the practices of conceptual and socially en-gaged art, allied with the methodologies of anthropology. Material to the choice of the addressed communities is the significance of distinctive or traditional social and collective processes in the production, and meaning, of the cultural subject and object. A central strategy of the fieldwork is to prioritize the values of these processes through a strategic reversal, of the artist’s role as sole producer of images of the other, and the status of the an-thropologist as privileged, detached observer. Instead, the artist/research-er enters into a communicative, dialogistic process with each community and its collective mode of cultural production, becoming the subject, or other, to be portrayed by the diverse and culturally distinctive approaches of each community. The goal is a novel, research-based, artistic approach and methodology enabling a genuinely new body of work, the “Dialogi-cal Portraits.” These portraits are conceptually and formally premised on the new knowledge of differing representational systems gained from the interactive processes, investigative research and learning undertaken in single case studies. Indexical, non-depictive, and non-pictorial means of constructing representations, which displace the primacy of the gaze and, in particular, the privileging of one gaze over another, are foregrounded here. By critically revisiting and re-assessing how the representation of

individuals in such “other,” or non-Western, sub-cultures might be con-structed, the artworks aim to develop a critique of Western perceptions of “portraiture,” and, therein, the constitution of identity and perception of self and others.

My research in and through art is inspired by and responds to the concepts of “faceless” portraiture, visible, for example, in the work of contemporary artists as Christian Boltanski, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Felix Gonzalez-Tor-res, or Sophie Calle. Boltanski’s work shows accumulations of individual objects and photographs of different people that share a similar story, that create a collective memory. On the other hand, Feldmann’s compositions (especially his artist books) present typologies (e.g. of female body parts) or portray a single person by documenting all her clothes. In his “Dateline Pieces,” consisting of lists of Names and Dates, Torres positions the por-trayed individual within a relevant social, cultural and political context. Calle, using fictional and non-fictional narratives to create a new form of portrayal, is also a major influence on my work. In her work “Suite Véniti-enne” (1979), for example, Calle pursued an incidental acquaintance from Paris to Venice while documenting her human target; for the complemen-tary work, “The Shadow” (1981), Calle asked her mother to commission a detective to follow her one day through Paris – in order to acquire photo-graphic proof of her existence.

My strategy draws on a video performance of the German artist Timm Ulrichs, and on a corresponding film editing technique. “Das getroffene Bild, das betroffene ich” (Ulrichs, 1980:57) is an artwork that responds to a newspaper report from 1973 about the putsch attempt in Chile. The reportage shows the photographer Leonardo Henriksen’s last picture (“Gewehr im Anschlag”): his murderer targeting his gun at him. In his performance, Ulrichs shoots with a gun into the lens of a running video camera. This performance strategy corresponds to the film editing tech-nique “shot reverse shot” that features one character looking at another character (often off-screen), and then the other character looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite direc-tions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other.

The “Dialogical Portraits” are carried out according to the same pattern as Ulrichs’ video performance and “shot reverse shot”: With the help of a local facilitator, I identify my project participants and commission them to interpret me, to express how they perceive me by means of their specific cultural practice. The final installations, the results of my artistic research, consist of two parts: the products, recorded perceptions and assignments – in short, portraits – the co-producers have created of me (for the most part without knowing it), and the portraits I made of them.

The questions I pass, unspoken, on to those involved in my projects are always the same: How culture-specific are the ways in which we humans perceive ourselves and others? What is reality, what is fiction when we look at ourselves and others? To what extent do we project ourselves when we consider or represent our counterparts?

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t r A C K M e

The Aboriginal Australians are excellent hunters. With their extraordinary skills in track-readings, old hunters are reported to be able to distinguish up to 200-300 single human footprints, as Robert Lawler informs us in his book Voices of the First Day (Lawler, 1993:186), and, if they are known to the hunter, to identify the individual that left the mark. Douglas Lock-wood, an Australian newspaperman, who travelled widely through North-ern Australia for more than 20 years, was amazed when he realised that his Pintupi interpreter was able to identify the person whose track they incidentally found in the desert (Lockwood, 1964:36). In the Aboriginal Australian’s culture – as in many indigenous societies – the representation of the individual never existed in the same way as Europeans understand the idea of the “portrait”. My interest in the Australian Aborigines’ faculty of track reading is centred on the hunters’ perception and interpretation of an individual – in my understanding, “portrayal” – based on the visible tracks that individual had left behind.

The four women I identify as contributors for ‘Track Me’ (2006/7) are all skilled hunters. I contacted them through Peter Bartlett (Japaljarri), a non-aboriginal Australian who fluently speaks Walpiri, the language of a group of now 5,000-6,000 indigenous Australians living in the Northern Terri-tory north and west of Alice Springs. Peter, who has – due to personal ex-perience and research – vast knowledge of Aboriginal Australian culture, has helped to conduct various research and documentaries on indigenous Australian issues. He acts as my facilitator and interviewer. Peter requests Mitjili, Ida, Judy and Noreen to follow and read a track I had imprinted by walking barefoot in the Central Australian desert the day prior. He pre-tends to have found the human traces incidentally during his walk while the participants and I picnic nearby.

Mitjili Napanangka Gibson was born and raised in the bush at Winparku (Mt. Webb), one of the last areas penetrated by Europeans, situated south of Lake Mackay and 600 km west of Great Sandy Desert. It was not until Mitjili was a mature woman who had already raised children in a tradi-tional Aboriginal manner that she came into contact with white people in 1957. She moved out of the desert and lived in the government settlements Yuendumu, Balgo, and Nyimpi, around the Tanami Desert. Mitjili, who’s first language is Pintupi and who is fluently in Walpiri, was married ac-cording to the Aboriginal tradition, where one man could be married to up to three or more women. Mitjili’s excellent tracking skills were sought after by geologists and biologists. Mitjili, who passed away in 2010, was one of the senior Indigenous artists in Australia. She is the mother-in-law of Peter Bartlet, who acted as my facilitator and conductor of the experi-ment throughout this project.

Judy Nambajimba Granites was born and raised by traditional Aboriginal parents in the South Tanami Desert, an area that became one of the larg-est cattle stations in Central Australia. Judy is connected with a site called Wanapi, which is associated with the dreaming time Rainbow Serpent. She spent most of her life in the Yuendumu Aboriginal community carrying out work at the community hospital. During her life at Yuendumu she be-came an accomplished subsistence hunter and is recognised for having as-sisted in maintaining the intergenerational transfer of traditional environ-mental knowledge, including tracking skills. Judy, who is fluent in Walpiri

and understands several other Indigenous Central Australian languages like Anmagurri and Pintupi, is considered to be one of the principal hold-ers of women’s ceremonial knowledge.

Ida Nungala Granites, who belongs to the Walpiri Group (north west of Yuendumu), was born and raised on the edge of Tanamu Desert at Yuen-dumu Aboriginal Community, 320 km north of Alice Springs where she has been employed as a health worker for many years. Ida had been taught tracking and the traditional subsistence hunting knowledge by her mother when she was a little girl. She fluently speaks Walpiri and is quite conver-sant in English. Ida has spent most of her life in a traditional marriage, as a co-wife, and is the daughter in law of Judy Nambajimba Granites, who she now looks after. Ida, who has raised several children and is a multiple grandmother living in an extended family, is still active in subsistence hunting in the land around Alice Springs.

Noreen Napajimba Robertson was born and raised in the South Tanami Desert and is connected to the dreaming time Mulgar Seed. Her parents lived a traditional lifestyle in an area of open grass, sand hills and few iso-lated rocky places called Janyinki. Noreen had been taught tracking skills by her mother and grandmother. Until her husband’s death she lived in a traditional arranged marriage and raised several children. During this pe-riod she was actively subsistence hunting. Most of her life she has resided at Yuendumu, where she had been employed for many years as a commu-nity shop worker and as a teacher’s aide at the community school. Being a widow with none of her own children still alive, she has now moved to Alice Springs where she raises five grandchildren. Noreen has found her-self a range of small jobs: as an actor for the film business in roles of hunter and guide, and as an artist doing small iconography for the tourist market.

Mitjili, Ida, Judy and Noreen were asked to follow and read a track I laid out by walking barefoot in the Central Australian desert. The field inter-viewer, Peter Bartlet, challenged the respondents to say what they per-ceived through the traces while I portrayed them on video. Having given the correct time and day the track was made, they agreed that I must have been a stranger behaving oddly, unfamiliar with the area, who didn’t seem to follow a goal. A non-Aboriginal young woman who has not yet given birth. This turned out to be quite a correct description of myself walking around for no other reason than to leave my marks.

“Track Me,” consists of three videos showing different aspects of track reading: the interview, the process of reading my traces before interpreting them and a series of shots showing the women during hunting, and while drawing traces into the sand; these last videos were carried out individu-ally with the interviewees during several other days.

All works of this series consists of two parts: the portraits the co-produc-ers have created of me, and the portraits I made of them. As a constant throughout all works of this series, I have employed photography or video as the medium for these portraits, as the continuous use of the same tech-nique highlights the respective technique that is investigated. This seemed important for me in regard to a presentation of the body of work as a whole. My “Portrait Partners,” for the most part, do not know to what extent they are involved in the project before it is concluded. My co-par-ticipants are commissioned and paid for their contribution.

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C o n C l u s i o n

I am carrying out research with people who have been historically overtly constructed as ‘other’ to my Western ‘self ’. My investigation, however, is not only restricted to the cultural or subaltern ‘other’. The representational practices of different sub-cultures and communities, such as psychologi-cal assessment, the evaluation of internet activity and customer behaviour, criminal phantom sketching, and the construction of avatar or look-alike identities, are also of interest. At this stage, however, I have primarily fo-cused on indigenous practices as examples of different representational modes. My understanding of the cultural ‘other’ is rather used as a syn-onym for an ‘opponent’, while the concept of ‘contributor’ is used to de-scribe the ‘counterpart’ whose insight and view of my ‘self ’ and the world around me is what I seek to gain.

My concepts and artistic products are not worked out in collaboration with my contributors. The participants are not informed about the re-search question or strategy, nor is my understanding of ‘portrayal’ ex-plicitly stated. Material about my artistic work (such as photographs or texts) is usually not provided, and I do not attempt to articulate concepts of contemporary art that are relevant to my work. The respondents are commissioned and paid. They are informed that the results arising from their participation contribute to my art project and will be exhibited. Their contribution consists of their interpretations of me, which are audio-recorded, photographed or video-taped with their agreement, and their photo or video portraits taken by me. Sometimes they are informed af-terwards about the artwork, its exhibition or publication. Our ‘dialogue’ thus becomes a practice which can be compared to ordering a hand-made, tailored suit, as opposed to a large-scale manufacturer who has total free-dom to decide which design (style, cut, material, pattern and colours) one should wear. It is not an easy process. It requires of the individual a state of complete surrender; a forfeiting of the idea of the self, and the willingness to allow the ‘other’ to reinvigorate it with his/her own idea. My interest is in comparing the suit which is fabricated with its creator’s own appear-ance, outfit and background, in order to investigate how his decisions are linked to me, and to him as a culturally embedded individual. My costume designer is aware that his/her name and portrait, together with additional information concerning the tradition of dress-making which s/he applied, will be pinned to the suit s/he made for me. This is restricted to informa-tion on the location and year the attire was commissioned, the cultural belonging of the designer and the connected tradition of dress-making, the use of material as well as of the culturally defined meaning of the style and pattern selected. Contributors know that I define the product of this collaborative process as my artwork which is created with their (and other peoples’) help, and that it will be communicated as such. It is clear to the tailor that I want to wear the unique suit s/he made for me in public. It is obvious that I am not able to say where, on what occasions, in the pres-ence of whom, or for how long I am going to display myself in the creation which s/he designed to suit me, as suggested and interpreted by my pres-ence and request. A picture may later be sent to the tailor of myself wear-ing the garment at a particular event, as a gesture of appreciation.

My activity is intended as an archive of forms of human representation and an offer of a different view of “portrayal” – in a very wide, as well as a very

specific sense of the term. The installations try to bring across attitudes and transitions from the own to the other; to experience the concept of own and other. Through the presentation in the form of an artwork, the exhibition audience is given the opportunity to experience first-hand that the cultural practices of others, belonging to different concepts of identity, offer new ways for the individual to identify themselves, both within their specific cultural system, and through the eyes of others. The Norwegian-American novelist and essayists, Siri Hustvedt (2012: 111), expressed this process in terms of the art of writing: ‘I often see more clearly from some-where else, as someone else. And in that imagined other, I sometimes find what I may have been hiding from myself.’

There is no question that I am an outsider, an unaffiliated roamer who finds herself in uncharted territory. I knew very little before my arrival at each site. I am fully conscious that my assessment and classification, in the scientific sense as well as in the eyes of my contributors, may be considered a misinterpretation. Being directed to me as much as towards the ‘contributor’ and ‘perceiver’ (the imagined viewer), my practice may rather be understood as an intense interest in experiencing our human po-tentials by ‘looking’ at myself through the ‘eyes of the other’, as expressed via multi-media art. This investigation of myself as an individual and a human being is a step towards obtaining possible answers, with the full awareness that the end of the road can never be reached. Anyway, art is not made to provide answers – it can only create a new, appropriate space in which the spectator may use the opportunity of the work to question and enlarge his or her own experiences by using all his or her senses for new cognitive possibilities. An artwork serves as a reflecting mirror, for the beholder as well as the artist, who is, like me, looking back onto her work to talk about it from a present perspective.

B i o g r A P H Y

Angelika Böck graduated in 1992 in interior design, and in 1998 in sculp-ture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Human perception and representation are the focal points of her work. Her practice is based, strategically, on dialogue and participation. Since 1999 she has carried out “Dialogical Portraits” in the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, the Finnmark region of Norway, Central Australia, Yemen, Malaysia and Mongolia. An-gelika Böck lives and works in Munich, Germany and Bario, Sarawak/Malaysia.

B i B l i o g r A P H Y

Lawler, Robert. Am Anfang war der Traum. München: Droemer Knaur Verlag, 1993.

Lockwood, Douglas. The Lizard Eaters. Melbourne: Cassell and Company, 1964.

Siri Hustvedt (2012) Living, Thinking, Looking. London: Sceptre, New York: Henry Holt.

Ulrichs, Timm. Timm Ulrichs: Totalkunst. Lüdenscheid: Ausstellungs-katalog Städtische Galerie Lüdenscheid, 1980.