Tetsumi Kudo: Retrospective / Loretta Fahrenholz: Two A.M.

Tetsumi Kudo
Retrospective

Bottled humanism, colored neon contaminations, tattered flaps of skin, and limp penises bring humanist self-assurance crashing to the ground. What appears as poison or chemical devastation is in fact an appeal to understand metamorphosis as a state of being. Over a period of three decades (from the mid-1950s to the late 1980s), Tetsumi Kudo (1935–1990) created a consistent body of work that serves as a model for contemporary conceptual approaches of posthumanism and the New Materialism. The Fridericianum presents the first comprehensive retrospective exhibition of the Japanese artist’s work in Germany. 

Forms converge, melt or conglomerate in the microcosms cultivated by Tetsumi Kudo. Body parts become autonomous beings and categorical hierarchies are set aside. Eyes, noses, and light-emitting diodes proliferate, while plants, electrical circuits, and brains merge in cages, cubes, boxes, and aquariums. Kudo reflects upon the ideological boundaries between mankind, nature, and technology from the distanced perspective of an unsentimental observer. He aggressively criticizes the supposedly unique status of the human being: “In this new ecological system, it is not possible that human dignity alone should retain the hauteur of a king. But it is very difficult to remove the sentiment of privilege (human dignity) and the sentiment of colonialism of the head of humanity that calls itself ‘humanist.'” Tetsumi Kudo experienced the nostalgic devotion to a humanist image of mankind in Western society, which he found extremely specious. In Japan, the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced a caesura; their devastating effects revealed the vulnerability of the human organism. Nuclear disaster is equivalent to a demonstration of both absolute power and loss of control, exposing the paradox inherent in Humanism. Consequently, it becomes necessary to transform the human being. Kudo demonstrates how body parts, plants, and electrical devices converge to form posthuman structures. In Kudo’s view, these are by no means apocalyptic scenarios or nightmarish visions of the future. Instead, the renunciation of Humanism is an act of liberation. Space is created for a posthuman transformation of the body that goes hand in hand with a reappraisal of traditional categories. 

Born in Osaka in 1935, Tetsumi Kudo studied at the University of the Arts in Tokyo from 1954 to 1958. Kudo left Japan in 1962 and moved to Paris. After several stays he returned to Japan in the late 1980s. Tetsumi Kudo died in Tokyo in 1990.


Loretta Fahrenholz
Two A.M.

Arbitrary control is a tool of power, as Molly and Holly, the Watchers in Loretta Fahrenholz’ new film Two A.M. (2016) are well aware. There is no logical explanation for what, when, and whom they watch. The unpredictability of these mind-readers is intentional. It is expressed in their violent mood swings. Loosely based on the exile novel After Midnight (1937) by Irmgard Keun, Loretta Fahrenholz’ screenplay and socio-fiction film presents frightening analogies to a contemporary world under the influence of surveillance, capitalism, and newly emerging fascism. In her novel, Keun describes two days in the life of a young woman, Sanna, in Nazi Germany. The brevity of the period covered by her story gives the novel a degree of concentration that enables the reader to experience that period of time as a state of being. Both rationally comprehensible fear and hysterical angst are palpable. In the film, continuous social control is diffuse and can only be managed with the aid of amphetamines—as was the case in Nazi Germany. Rearmament, forced labor in the Reichsarbeitsdienst, and blitzkrieg were inconceivable without speed. Fear, indolence, and paranoia cannot be channeled into modernization efforts without MDMA. While Sanna and her lover Franz appear to successfully escape in Keun’s novel, Molly and Holly pursue the couple into the night. There is no escaping the globalized world of total surveillance. 

Loretta Fahrenholz produced the film Two A.M. for her first major institutional exhibition in Germany. Three other films will be presented in addition to this new work: Ditch Plains (2013), My Throat, My Air (2014), and Que Bárbara (2011). In her post-cinematic films, Fahrenholz documents the contemporary reality that is shaped by collective fictions, staging, and media communcation.

The accompanying catalogue, with contributions by John Kelsey, Caroline Busta, and Susanne Pfeffer, is published by Koenig Books, London. The new film Two A.M. and the catalogue were produced in cooperation with the Kunsthalle Zürich. 

Curated by Susanne Pfeffer


The Tetsumi Kudo retrospective is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Hessische Kulturstiftung. The exhibition Two A.M. and the accompanying catalogue are supported by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung under its support prize “Catalogues for Young Artists.”