I was invited to the preview of Kirac 28, the latest movie in a long series that started so promising with its critical approach of the established art world, like gallerists on an art fair (the daughter of Paul McCarthy as a manoeuvering galerist), the art collectors and their influence on collection forming of subsidized musea and the like.
Kirac had a refreshing approach to a domain which knows almost its own rituals, trends, financial interests and nepotistic relation structures. Anybody working professionally in art knows that also there reputations of artists are established by certain gallerists and their sympathetic journalists, writing in world wide dispersed magazines, sometimes conversing in congress with art theorists combining professorships with publishing every now and then a contemplative meta theoretical book critical on latest trends in established art institutions.
Kirac was, at least to me, a refreshing approach to all those processes and people who live by art but are not artists themselves. The army of curators, art historians and the like with their own career interests is big nowadays and these careers tend to spread globally. A succesful curator can move from a small art institution to becoming a curator responsible for the artistic policy of an art fair, a Biennial and so on. These careers are following their own path and are often dependent on trends in public debates. Not art seems to be central, but definitions of curators, in which artists seem to be puppets in a discours battle. Currently, for example, it seems to be very en vogue to appoint non western artistic directors to art institutions in the ongoing wave of anti racism and post colonialism. These directors subsequently start to redefine the art discours in which the art shown becomes instrumentalised for politically correct positions according to the new vocabulary. I liked the focus of Kirac, coming out of a fusion of artists and an art historian, on these kind of processes, demasking agendas maybe not so discernable for the public that is not familiar with these power processes steering reputations and careers in art.
Kirac´s initial movies touched these subjects and made them, at least in the Netherlands, known in the public realm. It became international news when they got in a controversy with famous French writer Michel Houellebecq, who accused them in 2023 in a booklet of around 90 pages of "character assassination", "rape" and the like, while he was lured in playing a role in a erotic movie initiated by Kirac and with one of the actresses swarming around the Kirac team. The switch of institutional critique towards openly luring erotically naive, like Sid Lucassen, or even sophisticated, like Houellebecq, nerd like men, into a having sex with young women on camera was a path which could be described as critique on society and the way of establishing erotic relations in a time of Tinder like social media, if you wanted to give it a noble purpose, where artists try to get to grips with society in 21st century.
Some would see, though, a switch of Kirac into vulgarity as it didn´t seem to have a deeper reflection on what they were trying to expose now, after their strong anti institutional crusade. Was Houellebecq symptomatic of the moral corruption of famous artists or of art in general, what was the link with the former film in which self proclaimed right wing philosopher Sid Lucassen was exposed to being an inexperienced, socially, rather dumb, man, who was lured into an erotic movie?
When I was called by the main character of the latest film, no 28, Melchior Koch, I didn´t know what to expect, but curiosity drove me towards the theatre the movie was shown in. Koch was waiting outside and checked my credentials. A young handsome man, with a sensitive glance promises at least some youthful energy pouring again into a new episode of the Kirac team. Looking around I discerned some women that were "starring" in some of the former episodes in which, young female sexuality and male wannabe intellectuals collude in a estranging splash of domains, leaving mostly the men behind in utter despair. Sid Lucassen was a victim, and even famous writer Michel Houellebecq a next one.
What could we expect now? Melchior plays himself and tells Stefan Ruitenbeek and Philip van den Hurk, the other male protagonists also of this episode on his challenges as a young, starting and aspiring artist. In the beginning the talent of Melchior Koch is not that clear, is he a musician, an actor, what are his aspirations? Is he only looking for money and in this way tries to use the Kirac team to get to financier van den Hurk?
The plot is not that clear. Van den Hurk and Ruitenbeek might be interesting personalities with a certain sense of humour that try to play the tutor to Koch in the beginning but slowly start to unravel the young Melchior on his true motives, not stopping in softly insulting him and trying to make him feel his dependence.It is at least Koch who shows vulnerability in his insecurity and his lack of knowledge on how to build an artistic career. Well, the two older men might not be the right companions for furthering that career as they have their own agendas.
Melchior turns out to make drawings, after the movie, in which last scene there is a pseudo sexual assault of Ruitenbeek on Koch, a drawing is shown, after pulling up the projection screen. Koch seems to have chosen the wrong partners to enhance and boost his career. When I talk to him afterwards he says he likes drawing, "that is the thing I can do best". But why then play in a movie of the current Kirac team that has no ostensable interest in your drawings or in your endeavours as long as you play a role they can use to, eventually, shock and awe? The departure of former Kirac contributor Tarik Sadouma seems to be felt till today. The pepper content and his confrontational approach seems to be for a big part due to his contribution and now that he left the team, Kirac struggles to be able to keep its former supporters and attain its former level.
Looking around I see a lot of wannabe sharp looking people, that apparently are still drawn to the Kirac project. Some of them even seem to expect an actor´s career growing out of this. I hope their expectations are not too high, because the Kirac project doesn´t seem to be focused on enhancing any careers except their own, for which we can not even blame them, as they seem to be, financially at least, dependent on the capital of business man van den Hurk, who, as a real potential Macchiavellist, seems to pull the financial strings, as long as the Kirac team delivers and don´t hurt his feelings or business interests. In former episodes, he repeatingly threatens to cut funds in front of the camera, when Ruitenbeek is about to reveal his business dealings.
I would never give a financier such a big acting role as the current Kirac team seems to offer him, Van den Hurk is now even "starring" as one of the main characters. His role in the film is not that exciting. He keeps his tightly self controlled persona up even as an actor and is seldomly really challenged in front of the camera. If Ruitenbeek has something to win, it is by not focusing too much on van den Hurk anymore, to begin with curtailing his now rather dominant role in the movie, how charming he might be as a person, as he seems to be blocking its narrative development. It can be interesting to show the relationship between director and financier in one film, but to repeatingly showing the tension between him and director Ruitenbeek is not adding much. But that might need courage and directly endanger the ongoing production of a, still, seemingly succesful, project. Public funds now also support Kirac. The whole Dutch cultural establishment was eager to open its arms to a, finally, internationally, known project and even in the US, professional artists follow it, some even producing a sequence of video blogs on it. Not bad for a small Amsterdam based video company. As Dutch public funds eagerly stepped in as co sponsors of the project, even the financial dependence on Van den Hurk might be diminished.
The big waiting is still for the final cut of Kirac 27, the Houellebecq film, that is supposed to make them ´really big´ and probably more independent of van den Hurk. Kirac, dreaming of world fame, finally, on the back of the French writer Houellebecq, who made a fool of himself. Kirac wouldn´t care less. Van den Hurk, as a real business man, shall probably be very happy in having contributed to this success, if it happens, because the Kirac project already seems to have lost momentum...his revenues of the project are less clear, but at least he can say to himself that he contributed to an almost world wide famous video art project...
Hans Kuiper
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