Past Imperfect
CascoProjects 2003
Casco Issues #9 2005
Past Imperfect explores the relations between the radical output of the conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s and everyday life, gradually moving on to include how radical ideas from the past are linked to those of today. In all corners of life (politics, literature, intelligence, science) radical actions, even if they seem to have disappeared in oblivion, continue to influence and shape the public arena. Past Imperfect searches for hidden pasts by lifting stones and poking underneath.
Past Imperfect contains 82 cases, brought together in Casco Issues #9: PAST IMPERFECT (2005), consisting of 10 different small zines glued together in random order, each with a different front color. This publication, designed by Wil Holder, is the result of a research collaboration between Bik Van der Pol with Lisette Smits and Wil Holder. It is intensely guided by curiosity, amazement and suspicion, accepting the risk of being totally incomplete or overly thorough.
Past Imperfect is a collection of cases around notions on disappearance, perfection and imperfection, excessive control, compulsion and withdrawal - as varied as causal developments, state fiction and ambiguity, coincidental histories, preservation and destruction, dark politics, the haunting of artifacts and economical speculation, erasure, protection, the impossible made possible, and much more.
Some case studies have been developed into a new work.
An example of this is Past Imperfect (Case 39), made for Life, Once More - Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art, curated by Sven Lütticken, at Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam. Another example is Trinity (April 2, 2005, New Mexico), a film- and research work, exhibited at Secession in Vienna in 2005.
Past Imperfect (Case 39)
Life, Once More, Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art
Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art
Rotterdam
2005
Past Imperfect (Case 39) focuses on cases of disappearance, perfectionism, excessive control, and withdrawal.
Howard Hughes was well known as an aviator, movie producer, and billionaire. He died April 5, 1976, after 10 years of reclusion in, among other places, a hotel room in the Desert Inn Hotel in Las Vegas.
He produced several films: Scarface, Hells' Angels, Invasion U.S.A. and in 1956 The Conqueror, with John Wayne in the leading role of Genghis Kahn. The Conqueror was shot in the Nevada desert in 1954.
This area was also the ground of the Nevada test sites where in the 1950's more than 100 nuclear tests have been executed. The fall-out of the nuclear tests stretched over large parts of the United States. People living in that area (declared 'safe' by the authorities) had parties and pic-nics in the sand. The dust was ever present. Cast and crew of The Conqueror rolled through the sand during the countless fighting scenes and played with Geiger counters (which reacted). Howard Hughes shipped 60 tons of Nevada desert sand to a Hollywood studio, to rebuild scenes for extra shooting.
Many of the people living in the area of the Nevada test sites died of radioactive diseases, including many of those working with The Conqueror. Eventually, Hughes took The Conqueror out of distribution, leaving only him to be able to watch the movie over and over again in his hotel room in Las Vegas where he locked himself in.
The Nevada Desert is close to Las Vegas, only 150 miles from the Desert Inn Hotel. Hughes, a spider in the political and corporate web, bribed and manipulated several presidents, among them Nixon, to stop nuclear testing on his doorstep.
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