WHAT ARE PEOPLE FOR? – KUNSTVEREIN GOETTINGEN – JUNE-JULY 2017
There’s a skeleton family that sits around in my back alley. Their skin
obviously got too old and saggy, they threw it in the bin with a ghastly grin,
as I said, in my back alley.
What Are People For? at Kunstverein Göttingen is British artist Anna McCarthy's
first institutional solo show in Germany. Black humor, intelligence, political
resistance and an almost journalistic interest in societal topics characterize
McCarthy’s work. At the Kunstverein Göttingen, McCarthy deals with
the production and reception of current news. The dispositif term refers to exhibitions
that are seen as "arrangements", which constitutively represent a structure
for organizing knowledge of a society/culture, and thereby form and question
interpretations and laid out constructions. The usual linear narrative, with
which present-day and historical occurrences are written, McCarthy counters with
a subjective (exploratory) approach. McCarthy's video series "HTSAR TV",
which was produced at Lenbachhaus Munich in 2016 and will be shown for the first
time in its entirety at Kunstverein Göttingen, describes the world's current
political situation as a global "state of emergency": A contemporary
vision, in which sense and social responsibility has lost all importance and
political populism has taken over knowledge production and the regime. Rooted
in real situations and occurrences, the series immediately reacts, as does daily
news, for example to the alleged coup d'etat in Turkey last summer. The videos
show a kind of real-dystopia, and at the same time our unintentional, as well
as intentional inability to counteract the dominant political situation: The "HTSAR
TV" journalist resigns on her summer holiday, stating plainly: "I have
turned of all news push notifications". Alongside the videos, McCarthy incorporates
a series of installations, which deal with topics surrounding humanity, hierarchical
power structures and develops on the figure of the scapegoat, which already makes
an appearance in the video series. "People-killing Pizza Machine" and "Cucking
Stool" are two installations, which McCarthy describes as "Rubbish
Torture Instruments" – crudely built and non-functioning torture
instruments. The installations are constructed from found objects, which
can continually change their position, but through their layering attain
structure from chaos.
For the Kunstverein Göttingen McCarthy's artistic research expands to the
topic of hunting and scavenger hunts. She approaches this line of thought idiosyncratically
and associatively, from laying trails with aniseed to the original ancestress
and matriarch of the Jack Russell breed, who goes by the name of "Trump",
to falsely laid trails leading over crumbling walls and through mountains
of mystery meat.
McCarthy follows an interdisciplinary approach to combine personal fiction
with current political, cultural, ecological and social changes to our time
and creates almost conspiratorial connections between personal and actual
societal change. Her way of working is thereby always based on improvisation
and intuition, so that coincidences and mistakes are fundamental elements
of her practice. Anna McCarthy's works are impressively manifold and all
encompassing: She works in an array of media, including drawing, painting,
installation, music, video, performance and artist book. The collages, sculptures
and films, often result from found and forgotten objects from her household,
as well as from the street. McCarthy uses these different elements and individual
parts to construct a world of experience, in which visitors can go on a mental
scavenger hunt.
The accompanying artist book "What Are People For" by Anna McCarthy,
is an associative, contextual supplement to the works on show at the Kunstverein.
Publication available to order here or
via Hamman & Von Mier publishing.
Girlie Greasy Tetris
Meat – scavenger hunt
Mm skins x 7
Onuphrius/Onuphria
People-Killing Pizza Machine
Meat-Dealer
Coat 
HTSAR
TV 4
My
sister is my mother's brother
HTSAR TV 3
The beginning of violence 
Meat Dealer Coat II 
Cucking Stool 
Westwood Crumbs 
Guarder of the Peace
*****
Photos @Lucie Marsmann
