Heavyweight History: Christian Jankowski at the Lisson Gallery

What is the weight of history? Can we measure it, raise it up, overcome it? Might some history weigh heavier on us than other? Thanks to Christian Jankowski and the Polish weightlifting team, we may be a little closer to answering some of these questions. In producing his film Heavy Weight History (2013), the German artist enlisted the help of a group of eleven professional strongmen to attempt to lift a series of historical monuments in and around Warsaw, from statues of the nineteenth century socialist activist Ludwik Waryński to Ronald Reagan.

Poland and, indeed, much of the former eastern bloc, may well be feeling the weight of history bearing down rather heavier than most upon its shoulders at the moment. The violent return of the repressed spectres of the far right and far left alike on the streets of the Ukraine and elsewhere has done little to halt the ongoing erasure of historical monuments from the cities of the ex-USSR and where they are not erased altogether they tend to be shunted into out-of-town theme parks (as in Budapest’s Memorial Park and Grutas Park in Lithuania). As Agata Pyzik remarks in her new book Poor But Sexy: Culture Clashes in Europe East and West, the more countries aestheticise their past, the greater their political passivity. In Poland, in particular, the idols of communism were quickly replaced by Western icons like McDonalds.

And so it is with Jankowski’s experiment. Narrated breathlessly and relentlessly in the manner of a televised sporting event by a commentator who details the history of each monument like a
team’s track record, “eleven brave men” in shorts and tank tops hunker down together in order to “face history”. But while the team are able to shift the mid-nineteenth century bronze mermaid from the Old Town Market Square, and even lift up the sleeping soldier who lies amongst the Monument of Polish-Soviet Comradeship, nonetheless one statue in particular proved peculiarly resistant. “Ronald Reagan is like a rock,” announces the commentator triumphantly. “This is the heaviest weight history!”

Around the screen upon which this film plays hang seven photographs, each one 140 by 186.8 cm, capturing for posterity these heroic attempts at shouldering the weight of history. In high contrast black and white and printed on baryt paper, the images transform the efforts to shift these old monuments into monuments themselves. But one thing especially highlighted in the photographs is the way a sheet of off-white fabric is hung behind each monument before lifting, in order to create a blank, context-free background for the action. It’s this final detail that suggests perhaps that the way historical events are framed in public discourse has some bearing on how easy their burden is to shift.

Fantastic Mr Fox (Wes Anderson)

Mid-way through Wes Anderson's highly enjoyable new film of Roald Dahl's classic, Mr Fox (George Clooney) turns to his wife (Meryl Streep) in a moment of apparently earnest contrition, and says, by way of explanation for his outrageous and dangerous behaviour, "I'm a wild animal." "But you're also a husband and a father," she reminds him. At such moments can one possibly fail to be reminded of the shrugged shoulders of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, excusing his sexual or financial impropriety, "I never said I was a saint!" Mr Fox's curious combination of suave urbanity and occasional ravenous vulgarity seems to encapsulate the precarious position of many of today's clownish world leaders, caught between high tea with dictators and embarassing themselves before the U.N., who justify themselves before their people with an appeal to their sincere aspirations towards "greatness" (and great things, of course, sometimes require great sacrifices . . . ).

It was Ronald Reagan who established the typical postmodern figure of the "teflon president" (later to be imitated by Bush and Berlusconi) whose popularity only improved with his increasing public fallability. Whereas the commentators cataloguing his errors could only come across as stiff and pompously elitist, Reagan's fallability only seemed to make him more human, more lovable even, in the eyes of the electorate. The same is apparently true of Mr Fox: no matter how often his schemes and plans lead them into disaster and misery, the animals continue to accept Fox as an almost Mosaic leader, cheering his toasts as he leads them in doomed flight to the promised land.

Behind the pragmatic insistence of director Wes Anderson (in Sight and Sound) that the choice of American actors for the 'goodies' was purely due to a lack of confidence in writing for British voices (and, hey, animals don't really speak anyway, so why shouldn't they have American accents?), we should nonetheless discern a certain ideological mystification. For though, in truth, it is the animals in the film who are the 'terrorists', their affective position within the film as plucky outsiders corresponds perfectly with the self-presentation of the American state, since September 11th, as a beleagured bastion of freedom, attacked on all sides by almost supernaturally powerful foreign outsiders (and the British accent, of course, has been a stand-in for suspicious alterity since the dawn of sound).

Perhaps, however, The Fantastic Mr Fox goes some way towards deconstructing its own ideology. Far from the erratic, spontaneous personality Mr Fox presents in his sincere confession, the truth lies on the surface. He has, after all, the cunning of a fox. To quote Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, "this appearance of [Berlusconi's] being "just an ordinary guy" should not deceive us: beneath the clownish mask there is a mastery of state power functioning with ruthless efficiency." The fox is always ready to bare its teeth, lunge, and bite.