NOAH LATIF LAMP Missing
22.11 – 15.02.2025
NOAH LATIF LAMP
Missing
22.11.2024 – 15.02.2025
False Flags
In the video “False Flags”, Lamp burns 195 national flags, one after another, in no particular order. Flag desecration is illegal in about half of the world. The laws about flag desecrations are mostly rooted in protecting national symbols that represent collective identity, pride or unity. These laws typically prohibit the burning or defacing of national flags, especially in public – as to prevent public unrest.
In countries with robust free speech laws, flag burning, as a form of protest, will remain protected under the right to free expression, much like how political satire would be protected. For example; In 1989, a divided United States Supreme Court upheld the rights of protesters to burn the American flag in a landmark First Amendment decision. Justice Scalia, one of the initially opposing judges, later explained why he cast the deciding vote in the Johnson case, on the principal of a textual reading of the First Amendment. “If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag,” Scalia said at a November 2015 event in Philadelphia, one of his last public appearances. “But I am not king.”
Lamp did not burn his flags in public, neither did he try to cause public unrest. He performed his action in a non-descript backyard, brought in a box of polyester flags, and one by one removed the plastic covers before burning the flags. The whole action takes about one hour. He made an individual statement burning not one specific flag, but all the flags. It’s an action that could be easily misunderstood.
The pandemic and all of its restrictions dominated public attention and social practices for almost three years. There was declared a state of exception in many national contexts during the pandemic. A revolution took place in the governing of bodies and the obstruction of social life, even the basic togetherness of humans. In a direct, physical way, the pandemic regulations were radically individualizing to a degree that had not been seen in either normal societies or normal crises and emergencies. It seemed however, most global citizens had no problem to accept the extreme measures, and give up part of their individual freedom and core human rights to their governments, in in return for a feeling of -state provided- safety. It is at exactly this point it becames unclear wether we are living inside or outside of the juridical system. The mix of ‘fear’ and ‘immanent danger’ makes us live in a grey zone that is maintained as long as there is a consensus we are still living in the exception.
Missing
When the exhibition MISSING was announced over social media, the image used was a poster design featuring the artists’ portrait, taken from his Dutch identity card, with the word MISSING above it. Only one physical copy was made, and is featured in the exhibition.
Our moral judgment when living in the state of exception — especially during the pandemic — became more harsh and individal than before, in line with the simultaneous blurring of our social rules. Where the reaction on a “missing person” announcement used to be one of collective empathy (it suggests harm is done to our social group by an unknown factor), it shifted to individual responses, where situations are measured against one’s own status, and to which level one was following the ‘new rules’, or to be a citizen within the “new normal.”
Our bodies and minds may have grown weary and tired of intimate state interference, developing a kind of automatic repulsion and distaste of our position within the state of exception. In this light the current label for someone missing might just as well be someone who decided to leave the group, rather than someone who was taken away.
implies the grey area of where our political bodies ended up, either in- or outside the “exceptional” juridical reach.
When living under the constant individual pressure of the powers that maintain the state of exception, it will not only polarise our society, it will also change our individual behavioral pattern. In voting, in our morality and in the way we socially interact. We’re in a constant state of unrest, and are driven by a feeling of “unresolvedness”.
Firewood
Lamp is a frequent visitor of commercial exhibitions and artfairs, and has en almost compulsive habbit of photographing his own shadow or reflection in other artists’ works. It feels like an eliminating process, where on encountering a piece of art, it needs to either be possesed or defused.
When he made the work Firewood – inspired by Carl Andre’s floor pieces and woodworks, another compulsive desire to “resolve” a work was at the base. Firewood is a tower of stacked wooden beams, with an approximate height of 180 cm. Not unlike Andre, Lamp wanted to make a work that could either be used, challenged, or brought to a critical point in it’s excitense. The structure was first installed on the public square in front of the gallery, beam by beam, observed by some curious bystanders. Then the artist picked up a jerrycan and started pooring gasoline over the wood, thus temporarily charging the work with an acute sense of danger.
The feeling we get because of the closeness to a potentially dangerous object in an assumed safe situation (one would not expect to have to be ‘on guard’ at an art gallery), is not unlike the above mentioned intimate state interference when living in the state of exception.
Little Brother
Another example of this is the loop of interference and counter-interference related to the potential information our cellphones can provide when it would be considered ‘exceptionally justified’ to use our data against state interference or vice versa. Recently, we saw the rise of government approved use of cell-site simulators for police enforcement, as was widely discussed recently in relation to the Black Lives Matter protests. Cell-site simulators are devices that have a signal so strong that cellphones will connect to them instead of the closest cell phone towers. They can either jam signals, distract information or broadcast to all closeby cellphones.
Where cellphones and social media were initially used for picturing and filming at protests, to document police violence, officials started to jam, track or count protesters cellphones to counter the protests. Even more so, in case of the BLM protests, the police partnered up with the data company Dataminr who designed an application to be used by the police, called First Alert. To establish this Dataminr was given so called ‘Firehose’ priviliges, enabeling them to have 100% live access to the twitter stream, including the location details for uploaded pictures. In addition, Dataminr scanned Snapchat and Facebook in harvesting data for First Alerts as well, where information from Facebook-events for demonstrations were particularly useful for establishing the time and place of protests.
In return protesters would start using encrypted platforms, disconnect their phones from networks, or use dedicated software to blur faces of the protesters.
Little Brother, the title of the work excisting out of the GSM network jammer which Lamp included in the exhibtion, is a reminder of this loop of interference. It’s title implies the recognition of the idea of ‘Big Brother’, and how counter-interference can be expected when certain borders are crossed.
As an artwork, Little Brother is remarkably straight forward in that sense. One can imagine the use of a jammer as a countermeasure in a protest situation, but at the same time it embodies one of the oldest mechanisms in contemporary art, placing an opposing idea against a general consensus, once the idea is there, there is no way back.
R Kelly
Following leaked video recordings, R Kelly was prosecuted on child pornography charges in 2002, leading to a controversial trial that ended with his acquittal in 2008 on all charges. In 2018, Kelly released a response track titled “I Admit”, in which he refuted claims of sexual abuse, cult leading and pedophilia. Renewed interest in the allegations resulted in additional investigations by law enforcement beginning in 2019, which led to multiple convictions and Kelly’s arrest. In 2021 and 2022, he was convicted on multiple charges involving child sexual abuse. As of 2023, he is serving a 31-year combined sentence.
It is a controversial decision by Lamp to put an image of R Kelly in the exhibition. It was the image used by Kelly’s lawyer to discuss the first exposed video’s in court in 2002. There is a lot to be said on this matter, but most importantly, what the artist is trying to address is the artworld’s declining capability to make important issues debatable. The self proclaimed mirror of society has been increasingly narrowing it’s scope to an array of predominantly individual topics, avoiding actual conversation, or progressive discourse.
It is exactly the lack of language to debate these topics that is lacking in contemporary society, and is causing a further polarisation on all levels. In the case of R Kelly it took 20 years before society was ready to discuss the atrocities, and only then the US Justice department was finally capable to properly trial and sentence him.
Screen Test
In Michael Jacksons’ short movie Ghosts, the protagonist, Mayor Winston, is a character known for his conservative views and preoccupation with keeping everything “normal” in the fictive town Normal Valley. He ran for office and was elected mayor of the town by it’s inhabitants.
At a crucial point in the story, “Maestro” (The main character in Ghosts, also played by Jackson) possess Mayor Winston and forces him to dance with the ghouls, transforming Winston’s face into a ghoulish version of himself. “Who’s scary now? Who’s the freak now? Freaky boy! Freak! Circus freak! Who’s scary?”
It is believed that the charcter of the Mayor was modelled after American politician Bull Connor, who was a staunch racial segregationist. Known for his use of police dogs and fire hoses to quell the Civil Rights demonstrations in 1962-63. Eugene “Bull” Connor was Birmingham’s Commissioner of Public Safety in 1961 when the Freedom Riders came to town. He was known as an ultra-segregationist with close ties to the KKK.
As a symbol of segregation, it made sense Bull Connor was the inspiration for the Mayor Winston character. It is striking that Jackson insisted on playing the role himself. Visually, Mayor Winston could not be further away from Jackson, and it took a whole team of special effects artists to transform Jackson into the villain for Normal Town. A white, middle aged, ultra conservative, all-American politician.
When Lamp decided to be “white-for-a-day”, Mayor Winston was his first reference when bringing up the project. The make-up process to transform Lamp in a caucasian male took about 8 hours. Lamp got a fake nose, coloured lenses, a blonde wig and a lighter skin colour. When completed, he attended an opening of a nearby gallery, had a glass of wine in a local wine bar, and had his headshot taken in a booth for passport pictures.
Lamp always reffered to the intention of this project, titled “Screen Test” as a personal desire. The goal was not to ‘perform’ in front of any public, or to evoke any public reactions. Seen his fascination for Michael Jackson playing Mayor Winston, one could say his desire was not so much to ‘become’ ‘white’, but rather to inhibit the shell of a caucasian protagonist.
Hot Head
The exhibitions’ final piece, titled Hot Head, is a double sided cast of the artists’ face wrapped in bandage. The two welded “shells”, as well as the title of the work hint for the sculpture to become a Janus-headed bombshell. It is a work the artist will cast in aluminum and fill with gunpowder during the exhibition. Two faced portraits traditionally indicate a split personality, and in this case refer to a tension that is building up. It takes serious effort to maintain the state of exception. The rules are simple. “Attack, attack, attack.” “Admit nothing, deny everything.”
Noah Latif Lamp, 33 years old, was born into Giorgio Agamben’s nightmare. A permanent state of exception.
About Noah Latif Lamp
Noah Latif Lamp was born in 1991 in Amsterdam, NL. He is the third-generation born to a lineage of artists, is a self taught, art school dropout, whose work is often described as a harsh reflection of real life, action and gesture. Making works with various types of media, from sculpture to oil painting, from installation to performance, his motivation and passion to create is driven by his curiosity to question society’s structure and human behaviour.
His work is actioned by gestures of a brutal reality and holds a mirror to societal structures as well as human conditioning. And thus, he often finds himself participating in artistic movements and activations which can be seen as controversial, dangerous, and even resistant to proper social conduct or law. Always onto the next big dialogue which is on the verge of surfacing, Noah’s work travels with him, speaking to all those who interact with it.
Noah’s work is presented in recent exhibitions in Basel, New York and St-Moritz, earlier this year he presented Open Source at CC Strombeek, and later this fall he will show at DA Z festival in Zurich. Noah Latif Lamp is represented by Tommy Simoens, Antwerp.
