Kaucyila Brooke -
Tit For Twat
Tit for Twat addresses the biblical presumption of heterosexuality and its relationship to other theories of origin. Tit for Twat (1993 ongoing) takes quite literally the taunt heard in the early 90s on what was then called trash TV that if God had wanted homosexuality it would have been Adam and Steve (or, as I have added, Madam and Eve) and explores the implications of such changes to the creation myth. The so-called original garden is the site of much confusion about human nature and the nature of human sexuality. Tit for Twat discusses notions of innovation and origin in history, creationism, science and material culture. Rather than providing justification for historical inequalities, Tit for Twat ultimately deconstructs and questions the privileging of universalized systems of knowledge over de-centered changing narratives of difference. A three-part photomontage photo-novella narrative designed for exhibition and publication its chapters (Madam and Eve in the Garden, Can We Talk?, and Its Not about Shame! Accessorize!) are made as an ongoing open structure that is will not find an absolute end but will continue to have new parts added to the narrative as it developes.
Kaucyila Brooke, 2010
Articles
Martin Prinzhorn, Kaucyila Brooke - Borderlines, Camera Austria International, Volume 86, 2004
Stella Rollig, Madam and Eve in the Garden - Politik der Gelüste, Eikon - Internationale Zeitschrift für Photographie & Medienkunst, Vienna, Austria, March 2000
Stella Rollig, Madam and Eve in the Garden - The Politics of Desire, Eikon - Internationale Zeitschrift fur Photographie &
Medienkunst, Vienna, Austria, March 2000
Interviews
Interview: Henrik Olesen/Kaucyila Brooke, in The Sky is Thin as Paper Here, Volume 0, Galerie Daniel Buchholz,
Cologne, 2005
Kaucyila Brooke interviewed by David Joselit, January 12, 2008, in Kaucyila Brooke: Vitrinen in Arbeit, edited by
Christiane Stahl, published by Verlag Schaden, Cologne, 2008
hb brooke_prinzhorn
A dynamic part of any page, this component can contain any type of media:
images, text and more, and have its own menu attached.
To add media simply drag and drop them into a Mini Page page.
Note:
If you only want to display photos, use Galleries > Photo Albums.
Elevation_Plan_KBrooke_Geology_Museum
KAUCYILA BROOKE EXHIBITION CENSORED AT THE 2010 BUCHAREST INTERNATIONAL BIENNALE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART.
May 18, 2010
Renowned artist Kaucyila Brooke, an invited exhibitor and speaker at Bucharest Biennale 4, which begins on May 21, 2010, has, without warning, had her work removed from the show.
Ms. Brooke had been formally invited to participate in BB4 by curator Felix Vogel who has been following her work since viewing one of her exhibits in Munich in 2007. Kaucyila Brooke is a highly respected Los Angeles-based artist whose work has been shown extensively in museums and art galleries throughout Europe and in the United States. She is a member of the faculty at Cal Arts in Los Angeles.
BB4 is produced by Artphoto Asc., the umbrella organization around Pavilion Magazine, as well as the new Centre for Contemporary Art and Culture in Bucharest Pavilion UniCredit. Approximately 45 artists and artists' groups are expected to present their works/projects in various locations throughout Bucharest, including museums, a former observatory, art galleries and public spaces. Ms. Brookes work was assigned to the Geology Institute.
However, once the director of the Geology Institute had viewed the partially installed exhibit, he demanded that it be removed from the museum. No formal explanation has yet to be offered, although officials at BB4 have indicated they still expect Ms. Brooke to speakbut without having her work exhibited.
This de-installation will make Kaucyila Brooke's work, Tit for Twat, the only project to be censored during the 2010 Biennale.
"Now the work wont be shown," says Ms. Brooke, "because there's no other institution that's large enough to accommodate it. I've offered to be flexible, to install only part of the project, or show it in several spaces. But there's neither the space, nor the resources to rent one, and they (BB4) refuse to consider making room within the exhibition that's already installed."
Kaucyila Brooke's ongoing project, Tit for Twat, is a three part photo montage, photo novella, gender art narrative designed for both exhibition and publication. Its chapters, Madam and Eve in the Garden, Can We Talk?, and Its Not About Shame. Accessorize!, address the biblical presumption of heterosexuality and its relationship to other theories of origin, notions of innovation and origin in history, creationism, science and material culture.
"Kaucyila Brooke's comprehensive work "Tit for Twat", having been developed since the early 1990s, is one of the seminal works in gender oriented conceptual art of the last two decades. Its prohibition at the Geology Museum in the frame of the Bucharest Biennale 2010 would not only mean a severe case of censorship but also a very sad denial for the Romanian public to see this outstanding, concise, political but at the same time warm and humorous work," adds Stella Rollig, Director, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz.
Ms. Brookes solo exhibitions include Silberkuppe, Berlin (2009); Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation/ Forum fur Fotographie, Cologne (2008); Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna (2008. 2006). Recent group exhibitions include Centre D'Art Passerelle, Brest, France; Galician Center for Contemporary Art, Santiago do Compstela, Spain; Kunsthalle Baden Baden, Germany (2009). Ms. Brooke is scheduled to be a guest speaker at the Goethe Institute in Los Angeles, CA, USA on June 24th, 2010, for the lecture series, Big City Forum, organized by Leonardo Bravo. Ms. Brooke is represented by Andersens Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna and the Michael Dawson Gallery, Los Angeles. She is the former Director of the Program in Photography and Media at CalArts in Los Angeles where she has been a regular member of the faculty since 1992. Her work can be viewed at: www.KaucyilaBrooke.com.
For further information or to for interviews with the artist, contact Tracy Paleo at GiaMedia3, Los Angeles, CA (323)325-8879 or email:
gia_giamedia3.com.
####
Kaucyila Brooke's comprehensive work "Tit for Twat", having been developed since the early 1990's, is one of the seminal works in gender oriented conceptual art of the last two decades. Highly original in content and refined in its aesthetics and its use of media, for good reasons it has been shown in many places and contexts all over the world. If, as I hear, its presentation at the Geology Museum in the frame of the Bucharest Biennale 2010 will be prohibited, this would not only mean a severe case of censorship but also a very sad denial for the romanian public to see this outstanding, concise, political but at the same time warm and humorous work.
Stella Rollig
Director
Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz
Kaucyila Brooke is represented with several photographic works in the collection of MUMOK and they have been exhibited several times in recent years. We appreciate her careful and conscious work on pressing social issues, her artistic sensibility, expression, and attentive gaze. All the more incomprehensible and scandalous is it for us to find out that Kaucyila Brooke's work "Tit-for-Twat" has been censored in the framework of the Bucharest Biennale. We call on all who are responsible to reverse this outrageous step immediately and to present the work as planned to the public.
Matthias Michalka
Curator
Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien
Jacques Rancière claims "a new form of political subjectivity that would accept the point that we start from equality, from the idea that there is a universal competence -- that there is a universal capacity that is involved in all those experiments and that we are trying to expand -- to expand the field and the capacities of that competence." In "Tit for Twat" by Kaucyila Brooke, Madam and Eve are standing on the edge of human evolution, curiously embarking on a journey through space, time and history. Intellectually fascinated by the idea of nature, they decide to visit various historic gardens, to question the biblical assumption of heterosexuality (Adam and Eve), and to deal with their relation towards other theories of origin. Especially in a catholic country, the piece is highly provocative but don't we need provocative works in order to discuss future ways of living? In our times of passage, a time that implies a certain chaos, structures are going to disappear and the new is not yet at the horizon. Especially in uncertain times, we have to open our minds, we have to be able to asks questions, we have to show critical works and we have to discuss them - but not to exclude them. No religious or political authority can provide us with a clear definition of meaning, or communicate a socially sanctioned aspiration for the collective implementation of a utopia or a promise of redemption. Therefore, the act of censoring works (without even discussing it), is against society, is against all what contemporary art stands for today and questions the intent of the Bucharest Biennial as a whole. Believe in your audience and give them the opportunity to decide for themselves.
Bettina Steinbrügge
Co-curator of Forum Expanded/Berlin International Film Festival (D)
Associate curator of La Kunsthalle, Mulhouse (F)
Tit for Twat takes the question of gender to the "original" heterosexual drama of the Judeo-Christian world: Adam and Eve. It hit just the nerve it aims for in Bucharest, by slyly suggesting that "femininity" and "masculinity" were just as unsettled at the time of the Explusion as they are in the fondest dreams of progressives in the present. This would be a cause for celebration if it didn't mean that this major work would not reach the audience it deserves.
David Joselit
Carnegie Professor
History of Art
Yale University
PO Box 208272
New Haven, CT 06520
It is my understanding that Kaucyila Brookes epic photographic narrative, Tit for Twat, was removed from its intended venue shortly before the opening of the Bucharest Biennial, and that the action was taken because Brookes work addresses lesbian sexuality. This is censorship. This is the suppression of the work of a courageous, serious, mature, and profoundly original artist. This act of censorship is not only a professional outrage, it is so short-sighted as to be incomprehensible. An international biennial depends upon the generosity of artists and curators. It depends upon trust that professional standards in relation to artistic freedom will be maintained. The Bucharest Biennial has not only engaged in an act of outrageous suppression, but has violated the trust accorded it by a international community of artists. That breach of faith can only be repaired by getting Tit for Twat back into the Biennial without excuse or delay.
Catherine Lord
Professor, Department of Studio Art
University of California, Irvine
The censoring of celebrated artist, Kaucylia Brookes, work from the Bucharest Biennale 2010, because of its content, is extreme and highly irregular in a global art world of biennials featuring artists world wide addressing the full spectrum of issues in contemporary art. For Bucharest to be the biennale that censors a curated artist after the show had been installed is inexcusable. The Bucharest Biennale will live with the stigma of this from this point forward and the Hungarian and international art viewing public will be the poorer for it.
David Bunn
Artist
Visiting Faculty
California Institute of the Arts
Former Chair and Director of the Graduate Program in Art
University of Southern California
Kaucyila Brooke is not going back in time to rewrite the past. "Tit for twat" was there ever since the beginning of time. We never were so dumb and closeminded as we are here in Bucharest right now .
Bravo Kaucyila! And shame on us here in Bucharest where your censored work cannot be seen at the Bucharest Biennale.  This policy of exclusion adds one more grotesque touch to all our claims of having a free speech democratic society. However this wrong can and should be quickly repaired.
Â
Sanda Agalides
art historian and art critic
Bucharest and Los Angeles
Kaucyila Brooke's, "Tit for Twat," is a challenging piece of artistic literature about some of the most important topics affecting our humanity. It is a deeply thought out and literate investigation into the stability of gender categories and our deep mythopoetic narratives of origin. Some viewers will not like it, some will outright disagree. But these dissenters and others will all find wholly new dimensions of thinking about humanity's fixed categories of being. None of that can happen in the face of censorship, a form of silencing cloaked in cowardly evasiveness. The Arts are one of the very few global cultural spaces where repressions of difference may--and indeed must be--freely explored for humanity to find ways to move on, allowing discovery, discussion (however contentious), and progress towards a more tolerant world. It is a grievous blow to that future tolerance that the Bucharest Biennial has allowed Art's precious freedom to be compromised in the interest of pathetic inoffensiveness.
Ellen Birrell
Artist, Publisher and Editor
X-TRA, a Quarterly Journal of the Arts
I exhibited Kaucyila Brooke's work at our museum in 2006. The show was called "Why showing something, that one can see?" and it dealt with the phenomenon of gendered spaces. In five positions such as VALIE EXPORT, Tom Burr, Marion Porten, Kaucyila Brooke and Knut Asdam it opened a discussion on how gender is inscribed into body-language, architecture and space. Kaucyila Brooke's work took a big part of the show and her contribution on the examination of lesbian bars in Los Angeles and its region was a profound and a very important statement to the show.
Brooke's work is very direct, intelligent and smart. Besides of her technical brilliance in collage, photo and video, she has a wonderful sense of humor mixed with the very serious and important view on highly political issues such as norms of heterosexuality. She has the sense to deconstruct systems while showing and providing new views and models. "Tit for Twat" takes a big part in her artistic work. The brilliant and very humoristic picture-story develops alongside with her other projects. "Tit for Twat" is unique - The censorship on this work is one of the most shocking news of the last days. I do desperately wish, that the responsible persons for this will clear their mind and re-think a decision that seems to be lead by exactly the same standards of norms that Brooke is - besides others - questioning/discussing in her work.
Julia Schäfer
Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig, Germany
PRESS RELEASE
21 May 2010 - BUCHAREST BIENNALE 4, the most important contemporary art event in Romania, was censored by the administration of the National Geology Museum and of the Geologic Institute of Romania.
Considered by the international press one of the most important contemporary art events in Europe, BUCHAREST BIENNALE
(International Biennial for Contemporary Art) will take place in six venues in Bucharest, between May 21st and July 25th 2010, including the National Geology Museum. In the National Geology Museum a series of internationally renowned artists would have been exhibited, including Kaucyila Brooke, whose insurance and transport budget was considerable.
On the 7th of May 2010, the works of acclaimed artist Kaucyila Brooke, brought to Bucharest with the support of Austrian Cultural Forum, Austrian Embassy and the Cultural Ministry of Austria were taken down from the walls by the administration of the Geology Museum, that invoked the presence of pornography in the above mentioned works. The attitude of the persons responsible for this censorship proves the antediluvian mentality that persists in some Romanian institutions. It is certain that there is still an evident inability to participate in an open debate on art and civil society.
The violence with which part of the museum's employees has reacted evokes the stalinist times when party activists used to decide what is art and how can that be exhibited. We consider the act of the National Geologic Institute and National Geology Museum's administration as a flagrant breach of the free speech right, a hindrance of the artist's dignity and an insult to human intelligence through gestures that don't qualify as proper behavior for 2010 and for a country member of the European Union.
BUCHAREST BIENNALE wishes to express regret for the absence from the exhibition of one of the major works of the event, the lack of time and space necessary for its installation rendering impossible its exhibiting in another venue of the
biennial.
As this work was exhibited before in museums around the world, we asked Stella Rollig, director of Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz (a very respected and well known professional) to make a statement regarding this situation: "Kaucyila Brooke's comprehensive work "Tit for Twat", having been developed since the early 1990's, is one of the seminal works in gender oriented conceptual art of the last two decades. Highly original in content and refined in its aesthetics and its use of media, for good reasons it has been shown in many places and contexts all over the world. If, as I hear, its presentation at the Geology Museum in the frame of the Bucharest Biennale 2010 will be prohibited, this would not only mean a severe case of censorship but also a very sad denial for the Romanian public to see this outstanding, concise, political but at the same time warm and humorous work."
As the team of the BUCHAREST BIENNALE we will stand for the freedom of speech and the freedom of the arts and we will speak our position loud and clear any time the situation will require this.
We would like to express the special thanks and gratitude to Karin Cervenka, the director of Austrian Cultural Forum, and the Austrian Embassy for the support in this matter.
THE STATEMENT OF KAUCYILA BROOK
It was with great enthusiasm in April 2009 that I received Felix Vogels inquiry about my participation and cooperation with the 2010 Bucharest Biennale. I found it especially encouraging that he was knowledgeable about such a variety of the works and particularly engaged in thinking about my ongoing project Tit for Twat. I am so glad that I was invited to show this project and have truly enjoyed the production of new work and the chance to review the existing parts of this epic work throughout the last year. The question at the core of Tit for Twat is how we conceive of nature from the position of narratives of origin and it is a playful retort to that mythology. At the center of the garden is a tree with a snake coiled seductively up its trunk. In the chapters: Madam and Eve in the Garden and Can We Talk? That snake is the microphone, which promises that if you speak through it you will be understood as you are and as you think i.e. that you will have a recognizable subjectivity at last. That is the false promise of a mediated self that produces a fantasy of a unified subject through fixed hierarchies of desire and power whether they are science or myth. It has been wonderful to work with these ideas in the context of the exhibition Handlung. On Producing Possibilities, which takes on the serious consideration of these central cultural questions. However, I am deeply disappointed and saddened to not be allowed to finally participate with my work in the Bucharest Biennale. As an art object, Tit for Twat employs the formal language of photomontage and illuminated manuscripts and its delicate arrangement of multiple and layered imagery must be seen in person to recognize the relationship between its form and content. Unfortunately, this experience will not be possible for the public attending the exhibition. I understand that there have been difficulties for all of those involved in confronting the censorship
of my work in the exhibition and it is clear that a tremendous amount of resources have been marshaled from all sides.
I am extremely appreciative of the effort and I am keeping my faith in all the assurances that I have received that the Bucharest Biennale is committed to continue to fight for my work. I wish everyone great success with the opening and reception and send all my best to the other wonderful artists in the show, I am very sorry to miss the chance to meet everyone and learn more about their artwork.
I am also very sad that I will not share this event with all of you and am not able to stand along side you with my work exhibited as it was intended to be.
Kaucyila Brooke
BB4_press_release052110
CV
