Eléonore de Montesquiou 
 
 started  in Emergency Room  on September 18th 2006 in Berlin participated 10  times beetwenn September 18th and October 6th and 
 see expanded cv

see expanded cv

Eléonore de Montesquiou developped concept



                                                                  

intervieuw from the 17 oct. 2006 to the 20 oct 2006 emails correspondance

How did you come into the Emergency Room / Berlin test   ?

Colonel wrote me an email mentioning that he was looking for relevant Berlin artist for his experiment, so I had to face the challenge!

What did you exactly do ?

 It took me a while to find a way of participating which would correspond to my way of working and to my way of living, namely listening to the radio constantly –the BBC- and paying attention to the words people use in particular circumstances.
Thus, I wrote down sentences or rather words in between sentences that I heard on the BBC world service morning broadcasts. I edited them daily as short videos sequences - white letters typewritten on a black screen -.
It is rather dazzling to pay attention to these in-between agreed, elegant and very convenient turns of languages, you loose the track, the news are reduced to almost one level. The words you read could have been used for one or the other world conflict going on that day, repeated many times a day, listing one catastrophe after the other in a monotonous way.

For example, an extract of October 4th, 2006

feuding
a gunman
shoots dead
the structural problems that underpin poverty
this move
a huge tactical error
where safety is firmly guaranteed
pressure
strictly prohibit
any threat of
sincerely
a responsible state
grave situation

How many days did you come ?

From september 18th till october 6th
And I came almost everyday during that time, I believed this idea made sense if it was led very regularly.

What motivated you to come ?

hmmm….I guess I am very systematic, once I had programmed this daily exercise during a limited period of time, I just stuck to it. It was so radically different of my usual very slow and conscious work, that the challenge made me very curious.
 More seriously, taking part in an essentially democratic, almost republican, and very lively group experiment was highly motivating….



 20 th october 2006


Are you happy about what you did ?

Happy with the shape it had: simple, merely white words on a black screen.
 Unsatisfied still with my result, but I was running out of time to work on it the way it required.
 It improved as I got more used to the “exercise”, but I did not quite reach my aim of sorting out the words I picked out and rearranging them in a new precise way, which would have sense as a whole, as a strange imprecise story, vaguely reminiscent of the daily events.

If you are not totally satisfied with the piece you did for ER  could you imagine to do corrections on them later on 
or will you leave them like they are ? 
 
Since it is question of story telling or rather organisation of the words I picked out, it would have meant taking more time each day. In order to choose and edit more precisely  the words or sentences which were broadcasted. 

 It would have no sense to correct them today, but it is indeed the direction I would follow if I went on with this work.

Could you express an opinion about today through your art ?

 No, not about today, but about the way the information is given to the public.

Did you make mistakes in your art piece by working fast ?

Yes

 Which mistakes did you do by the way ?  

 See before….not precise enough in the agencing of the chosen words/sentences.

Will this project change some of your working methods in the future  ?

No

Would you like to experiment  something else in an other emergency room/another form ? another content ?

 Yes, maybe…yes, definitely…

In term of expressing opinion through art what kind of  content interest you ?

 Border and language issues, especially borders within Europe, between “new” and “old” European countries. I have been working for more than two years now on this type of border issues –geographical, ethnical and cultural- between Estonia and Russia. Also, I am interested in pointing out these issues by giving word to people I often meet by chance, not addressing to the political actors of the places I work in. Therefore my interest in language, I am very careful to restitute the words and expressions that were used, as I tried to do for your Emergency room.


Do you think artists should keep away actual political debate ?

No, I don’t, an artist is part of this debate just as any citizen is. But artists are not politicians nor political analysts and I fear this typical risk less attitude of some artists exhibiting and discussing almost exclusively amongst themselves their – consensual and correct and superficial – opinions.

Can it change or artists can only have superficial opinions ? Why so ?

Expressing a political opinion is a high responsibility, as any responsibility, it requires deep engagement. Artists do not differ from any other citizen in that matter, concerning superficiality or the right to express oneself as you asked earlier. However an artist’s opinion is more often made public, hence an increased responsibility. And there is a sort of artistic trend to denounce a certain topic but these statements rarely reach beyond the art world, where there is hardly any opposition. It is a comfortable way out, which is what I meant by no risk and consensual attitudes. Seldom do artists confront their reactions to the political actors. It is inherent to the way the art system functions: very freely, with hardly any censorship, but this freedom comprises its own limits, a very limited visibility and a general consensus amongst peers.

Why should the opinions be superficial  ?

 They can be very emotional, which is fine, but then to present this emotional reaction to the public needs a more relevant understanding and analysis of the situation. BUT I have an example of a very positive engagement: after Haider was elected in Austria a few years ago, artists and film makers reacted immediately and strongly, it was a clear united and efficient opposition, which has repercussions today still.

Is  there is any body like Haider now that should rise a storm  of united protest  ?
 
Are you thinking of Mr B. for example? Definitely.

No I was more thinking about Europe , in Germany ,  France very close to us

 Whom were you thinking of then? And what sort of reaction do you await? We can all choose between going down in the street and demonstrate, or working as journalists, or becoming political actors, or making some sort art. But then, to make art out of such reactions would be –in my opinion!- to find a balance between a personal approach and the broader context. And in neither in Germany nor in France have I found this balance. Your work is more “activist” than mine. I can just tell about my own research, which is to deal with political-social issues that have a link with my own story. For example the starting point of ATOM CITIES, a work dealing with (Soviet) Russians in Estonia was an attempt to understand why I was given the Estonian nationality when I first came to Estonia in 1992; while these Russian people were born there and most of them end up being non-citizens, with hardly any political rights. Then the project grew far beyond my own questioning.

Do artist react when they feel the danger can affect them in their kitchen or can they also react about more far away situation 
 
Both, and far away situation can reach your kitchen…I believe it is all one, reacting to a far away situation helps getting a clearer understanding of what happens in your own environment. I have in mind right now the work of two artists I esteem a lot, Ursula Biemann -I first saw her film about women trade in Asia and lately her brilliant “Files of the black sea”-  and Laura Waddington. Laura has spent half a year in the Sangatte red cross camp in France with refugees trying to cross the channel to England, both a very close and far away drama, and she chose to make a very personal film after this, she as a narrator telling about her meetings and what she witnessed in the camp.

Would you like to experiment  something else in an other emergency room/
another form ? another content ?

Yes, maybe yes, definitely

Could you imagine to do a collectif art work in the future in an ER ? 

Yes
 
If yes how will you imagine it to be ? with whom and about what in which form ??

 I would keep the concept of “Emergency” as it is, with its passage and retard, and colonel’s assistant who like François and Andrea sorted everyday’s projects out, archived them and updated a blogg.  Only I would open the debate to more specialized fields, invite journalists, political scientists, I would present parallel experiences –for example the web site “digg” that I had suggested you- , and so on and so on, to actually get to a more precise and conceptual understanding of the project itself and the reach it could have as far as “media trust” is concerned.

 I aggree  very much with inviting  specialized people and had that in mind  ,but for some reason it never came through 
the best will be if  artist could call them  like a hot line   if they want precise factas for exemple  ... 
the  precision of these people could be like tools .
do you know specialized people like you mention whom we could involve  ? 

 no one personally…but I guess the most difficult part would not be to have an idea of some one interesting but that this person have interest in taking part in an art project.