The Guardian - 01.08.2019

• The Guardian
  10 Thursday 1 August 2019
  Arts

Two light-box

tables, like the ones a photographer

would use to look at slides and

negatives, are set in a corner

of Alfredo Jaar’s airy studio in

Manhattan. One is suspended from

the ceiling, the other standing on

the fl oor directly below it. Over the

course of a minute, the suspended

table is lowered to meet its twin.

A thin black shadow is cast on to

the studio’s walls at the moment of

closure. As the table rises, the artist

is brightly lit again, just as visitors

will be when the piece, Lament of

the Images, goes on show.

There are no slides on the table,

something that often confuses

spectators. And that’s the point,

says Jaar. The piece illuminates the

onlookers in “a failed attempt to try

and get people to see each other ”, he

says. Jaar is big on failure.

Alfredo Jaar fl ed

Pinochet’s Chile

and now makes

art that tackles

the horrors of our

age, from torture

to genocide. As he

hits Edinburgh,

the artist tells

Dominic Rushe

why he’s never

really happy

with the results

When you live

with censorship,

the lack

of knowledge

makes you

fearful

‘I want to change

the world.

I fail all the time’

PHOTOGRAPHS: MURDO MACLEOD/THE GUARDIAN; ALFREDO JAAR; LUIS DO ROSARIO

For 30 years, the Chilean-born,

New York-based artist has been

confronting failure – our inability

to see, unwillingness to look , our

struggle to communicate – fearlessly

tackling some of the darkest horrors

of our age, from the Rwanda genocide

to the US’s “ black site ” detention

centres and torture rooms. He’s

never really happy with the results.

“I’m an idealist and a utopian,” he

says. “ I want to change the world.

And so in that sense, I fail all the

time because I have failed to change

it. I’ve failed to change the reality

around me. Even though that was

what I was trying to do .”

At the Edinburgh art festival ,

Jaar is failing again. As part of the

festival’s commissions programme ,

he is organising a public artwork

that takes its title, I Can’t Go On,

I’ll Go On, from the closing words

of The Unnamable, a novel by

another chronicler of failure, Samuel

Beckett. Edinburgh’s Bridge of Sighs

(appropriately enough) is home to

a large neon sign quoting Beckett’s

text, and his words will be spread

through the streets by performers

wearing sandwich boards: I Can’t Go

On on their chests, I’ll Go On on their

backs. It’s like the characters who

used to walk around advertising The

End Is Nigh. In this case it’s The End

Is Nigh, But Perhaps Not Quite Yet.

“It’s about our incapacity to change

this reality, even though I keep going,

I keep trying. Because this is the only

thing I know,” Jaar says.

A conversation with him will

leave you with a reading list a mile

long. He hoovers up the daily news ,

the only way he says he knows how

to work, and salts his chat with

quotations from favourite authors,

fi lm s and magazine pieces. Today he

recommends the bleak Romanian

philosopher Emil Cioran (“It is not

worth the bother of killing yourself,

since you always kill yourself too

late” ), the poet Adrienne Rich and

the fi lms of Cuban director Tomás

Gutiérrez Alea.

Another favourite writer, Italian

neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci ,

wrote about “the pessimism of the

intellect and the optimism of the

will ”. Gramsci was the

source of another recent

Jaar intervention, plastering

Rome with posters quoting :

“The old world is dying. The

new world is slow to emerge.

And in this chiaroscuro,

monsters are born.”

That chiaroscuro –

dark as Caravaggio – is

everywhere, Jaar warns. “We live in

dark times .” Just look at the climate

crisis, he says. “We face extinction.

What does it say about us and about

the world that the leader trying to

change this reality is a little Swedish

girl” – Greta Thunberg – “who is 16

years old?”

All is not lost, however. “With my

will, I have to be optimistic. If not,

I would just kill myself,” he says,

miming a gun to his head even as

he beams another of his frequent,

playful smiles. It’s obvious which

has the upper hand in the battle

between Jaar’s pessimistic intellect

and his optimistic will.

Born in Chile in 1956 , Jaar grew

up under the bloody rule of General

Augusto Pinochet , the US and

UK-backed dictator whose soldiers

travelled the country murdering and

Failing better ...

Alfredo Jaar

in Edinburgh with

Beckett-inspired

sandwich boards;

below, Lament

of the Images

‘We live in

dark times’ ...

posters by

Jaar in Rome

warning of new

fascist monsters

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