Artist: Woody Vasulka

The complete work of The Brotherhood is an installation that originally consisted of six respective works. It had been developed over ten years when it was exhibited in its entirety for the first and only time in 1998, at the then-newly opened museum, NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) in Tokyo. Additionally, it was the first major solo exhibition to open in the museum. The ICC took on the marvelous task of commissioning and shipping three parts of the installation from the United States to Japan and published an in-depth exhibition catalog, consisting of numerous scholarly insights into the exhibition and the importance of Woody Vasulka’s work, alongside interviews with the artist himself.

When organizing exhibitions and art-related events, one must ask themselves what relevance a certain piece of art might bring to the present. In 2015, when I first heard of The Brotherhood and Steina and Woody Vasulka described their longing to put the work together again to be exhibited in its entirety, I found it an important task for historical context. The content of this exhibition is therefore largely about preservation. To save what is historically important from destruction, so that history remains correct and that subsequent generations are allowed an exhaustive overview of the past. Let us keep in mind that The Brotherhood is one of the original interactive artworks of the world, and therefore it remains understandable for it to garner as much attention as it did from a tech-giant such as NTT.

Since most of those who helped make The Brotherhood have now grown older or said goodbye, it remained clear that this would be our last chance to save it from its eternal demise. While 25 years is not a long time in historical terms, a quarter of a century in technological history remains an eternity. Each part of the installation is made from salvaged technical relics found at the US military surplus waste cast-off site, near the Los Alamos Military Research Center, many of the scraps already defunct when found. It can therefore be stated that antiquities are being saved, which means that getting each piece to function properly has been one of our biggest challenges during this process. Following the fine thread that permeates these works, as carefully and accurately as possible. Being true to the original version as can be. But even though we managed to stay mostly successful in that regard, there came a few particular instances where we had to let go, keeping Woody’s words in mind when doing so: “This is a work in progress.” And the installation has certainly progressed here in our new exhibition hall over the past year and a half.

Woody, who was born right before the Second World War started and spent his youth in the Czech Republic, had made a game out of disassembling war machines that he came across in the fields that surrounded his childhood home. He could not avoid the horrid consequences of the war, for Europe was like heaps of ashes at that time, where even the remains of lost soldiers could be found. The disillusionment and hopelessness he later felt when communism had taken over his homeland was also great.

It is therefore understandable that he had chosen to stay away from societal conflict in his art. Woody, who had studied engineering and filmmaking with an emphasis on documentaries, was immediately drawn to video art as a medium of artistic expression once the video camera first came his way. In his mind, video became a utopian platform where a new aesthetic was taking form. There, he found freedom in the possibility of focusing solely on the medium itself and its innate abilities, free from the narrative discourses he had loathed in conventional filmmaking. It was his sincere belief that art should only serve art itself. However, this attitude was to change in the later parts of his life.

The conflict of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 stirred up difficult memories from his childhood. He took it hard to see the medium he had been so enchanted by being weaponized for propaganda during battle. Adding to his dismay was seeing how the war had been reduced to something that almost resembled a computer game. It was there that he started to reevaluate his stance towards the idea that art shouldn’t in any way revolve around ideological conflict. Woody ceased his experiments within the video medium and started to ask himself what content was worth dealing with in art.

The result was the ideology of The Brotherhood. Woody said himself in an interview published in the ICC exhibition catalog that in his mind this was really what it all came down to, “A fundamental question we inherited from the European enlightenment; "Is war really an aberration of human behaviour or an integral part of human evolution?”

As mentioned above, he lost interest in video for a while. The magic had worn off and he felt that the medium had now become a continuation of film as an intrusive narrative device. He begins to redefine his methods and approach to art. Both Steina and Woody had been working on three-dimensional works along with video art for a while, but mainly as a supplement or continuation of the video camera. Their attempt to see the world through the eyes of the machine. Expand the perspective, change it, and distort it.

But here, Woody begins to think into the space in another way. He always had a strong need to think independently, without the burden of tradition or obligations. Of course, there is no way to think oneself out of this world, but exploratory expeditions into the folds of time are a way to learn. He begins to rethink the space and make attempts to deconstruct it by creating what he calls knowledge spaces, i.e. the units that make up The Brotherhood.

He states that the tables, as he calls them, are a kind of hybrid or hermaphrodite. Both masculine and feminine. Composed of architecture, electronics, and engineering. During the time of making, numerous fine artists, craftspeople, and computer specialists added their passion and expertise to the project. All of the installations play upon sound and vision. It is safe to say that Woody and his team recreated immensely contemplative machines from military waste, bound to make us think.

The subject matters of The Brotherhood are multi-layered. Woody believed that the origin of modern-day warfare was integrated in the brotherhood that mostly depended on media propaganda and machinery. It’s about masculine ideology and the machine’s power of destruction. The masculine need to dominate. Also about the possibility within technology, and where it might lead us. It’s about the intention of moving technological systems into the realm of aesthetics. He mentioned his idea of creating a binary system that combines physical and virtual reality. And then he adds; “But the code requires an extra ability, an extra concentration, so I am slowly drifting into a separation between the real world and the world of the intellectualization, the interpretation and and control beyond the mechanical means. These mechanical arrangements here are only drawings in space that could be replaced by virtual reality. I have no idea when these disciplines will merge, if ever, or what the result will be. Whether it will again be illusionist ideology -as film was, or as literature is -or whether it will be some twisted post-Marxist explanation that God’s last hiding place is to be found in matter itself. That would leave the devil alone in charge of ideas. I draw no conclusions. I am looking for the vector that points to the possibility.”

It is interesting to read these interviews that appeared in the aforementioned exhibition catalog by the ICC in 1998. There, he also wonders if there will be a need, or even space for humanity in the future. Or if the future belongs to technology. Since then we’ve gone much further. We have recreated and redefined a large portion of reality, we have conquered the
virtual worlds of technology.

One of the tables stands further out from the others and has a more defined role within the whole. The role of The Maiden is, among other things, to personify the feminine image of witnessing the war. She no longer keeps her safe distance, but rather participates in the commotion and sorrow that follows human aggression.

The Maiden, the magnificent installation, flew all the way here from Japan at the end of last year. Without her, the exhibition would not be the same. The ICC, which originally commissioned the work from Woody agreed very generously to loan the work permanently in order for the work to be preserved as a whole, as the artist had wished. To them, I am very grateful.

Even though this production of the installation was originally intended to be about preservation and historical archiving it is safe to say that the message of the work is hugely relevant today. Unfortunately, humanity is faced with unfortunate developments in world affairs that could not have been foreseen in 2015 when this exhibition first came to our drawing table.

I would like to thank the numerous people who helped make this exhibition possible, especially Robert O’Kane who oversaw the production of the installation process and solved numerous problems with his expertise, that came up along the way.

Ingibjörg Jónsdóttir