The International God Look-Alike Contest   (1996)

 

The International God Look-Alike Contest   (1996)  

29 framed mixed-media images
Images are various dimensions*,  all exhibited within 36.5 x 48.5 cm frames

*The dimensions of the 29 images, listed in their installation sequence for exhibition, from left to right:

1) Chodzko’s ‘Loot’ Advertisement (41cm x 29cm)
2) Ulyia, Yakaterinburg, Russia. (15.1cm x 10cm)
3) Rund, Den Haag, Netherlands (8.9cm x 12.7cm)
4) Jennifer, Manitoba, Canada. (6cm x 4.7cm)
5) Christoph, Munchen, Germany. (29.5cm x 21cm)
6) Anon, Secunda, South Africa (21cm x 29.6cm)
7) Arend, Leeuwarden, Netherlands (12.5cm x 8.4cm)
8) Inna, Sevastopol, Russia (12.8cm x 9.1cm)
9) Asomah, Sunyani, Ghana (12.6cm x 8.8cm)
10) Abdulla, Calgary, Canada. (10cm x 15.2cm)
11) Galina, Vsevolohsky, Russia. (15.2cm x 10.8cm)
12) Anon, Karlsruhe, Germany (14.8cm x 10.5cm)
13) Anon, Austria. (6.5cm x 4.5cm)
14) Kely, Biella, Italy. (29.8cm x 10.4cm)
15) Conor, Dublin, Ireland. (14.8cm x 10cm)
16) Pedro, Mostales, Spain. (29.6cm x 20.7cm)
17) Ilona, Reichelsheim, Germany (10cm x 15.1cm)
18) Sergei & Christina, Minks, Belarus (15cm x 10cm)
19) Rac, Porto, Portugal. (8.9cm x 15.1cm)
20) Hermann, Munich, Germany. (29.5cm x 10.2cm)
21) Natalia, Turku, Finland. (15cm x 10cm)
22) Alejandro, Bueno Aires, Argentina. (8.8cm x 12.8cm)
23) Peter, Munchen, Germany. (29.5cm x 21cm)
24) Crissy, British Columbia, Canada. (15.2cm x 10cm)
25) Roman, St Petersburg, Russia (12.8cm x 18.2cm)
26) Richard, Cadiz, Spain. (15.1cm x 10cm)
27) Ingelala, Bierfeld, Germany (21cm x 19.6cm)
28) Ana, Pasadena, CA, USA. (28cm x 11cm)
29) Andrei, Nikolaev, Ukraine. (5.2cm x 4.8cm)

♦

Adam Chodzko placed advertisements in international classified advertisement newspapers which announced “…artist seeks people who think that they look like God…” In response, images were shared by members of the public over 12 months from locations around the world, after discussion with Chodzko.
An earlier national version of the work is The God Look-Alike Contest (begun in 1991). For this international version Chodzko was continuing to explore many of the questions and processes raised during that previous version.
Below each individual framed image in The International God Look-Alike Contest  is the drawn signature of the person who submitted the image, and the name of the town and country from where it was sent from.  Each image is a copy of the original sent to the artist, using the same material as its source, at the same size as its original, with a replication of any of the sources’ folds, marks, dents, scratches, stains etc. The resulting work therefore appears to be a collection of 29 ‘found images.’ But in reality the entire work is a ‘construction’ made by Adam Chodzko, (almost) identical to the authentic source material he received in response to his advertisement. This questioning of notions of the role and identity of the author/creator – and its allusions to the activities of ‘a god’ – are explored within the making/copying process for this work.

The International God Look Alike Contest work uses physical imagery, via physical newspapers as a response to a collective move into the digital, for both image and network.  Chodzko was partly responding to the emerging widespread use of the internet’s evolving diverse social networks, particularly from the mid ‘90’s (eg: eBay began in 1994). The system of classified advertisements papers used for the dissemination of his search for people who looked like god were chosen specifically because they seemed to be a part of a dying form of analogue social media.  The fragility of Chodzko’s quest is rooted in the peculiarity of the question, its placement amongst thousands of advertisements for more ordinary exchanges, its precarious system of dissemination (reliant upon a postal system and liaison between different countries’ classified advertisement papers) and the possibility of its mistranslation.  And yet, supposedly – at least according to Christian theology (Genesis 1:26-27) – we are all made in god’s image. Apparently no-one is exempt from responding to Chodzko’s all-inclusive question.  Instead it took him approximately 12 months to gather 28 responses (the 29th is a ‘portrait’ of Chodzko’s advertisement itself/himself), sticking to a self-imposed rule that everything received must be included in the final work.  The responses indicate the various degrees to which the request was adhered to, or completely overlooked, or dismantled by the different respondents.
Ultimately, we have no idea who sent these images, and why, and whether it is an image of the sender, or when it was taken, etc…
As viewers of the International God Look Alike Contest we are presented with, on the one hand, a glimpse; a true collective image of god. And on the other, a series of ‘false’ fragments.  If we are willing as viewers we can assume a lot and perceive the work with ‘faith.’  It is a work about images and image making. About looking into an image and wondering about its prior use, its folds, tears, marks, and accumulated dust; its history, place and time and its connection to its maker .

♦
Chodzko repeatedly circulated his request via a classified advertisements paper, Loot, at a time when this form of print communication was slowly disappearing, whilst the ownership of home computers and access to the internet was beginning to become more widespread.  Loot had become popular during a time of economic recession and high unemployment as a method of ‘making ends meet’. It was used to find work, somewhere to live, someone to love or to buy cheap second-hand goods direct from the previous owner.  It was this process of exchange that also was Loot’s hidden and inadvertent attraction; it evolved a social network, catalysing dialogue and agreements between apparently random others; travelling to a home in another part of a city to collect a kettle bought from a stranger who you’d had a quick ‘phone chat with beforehand.  It felt illicit, cutting out the big retail companies, recycling commodities, getting a bargain, even if it was being discarded by someone else.
Chodzko’s International God Look Alike Contest  is trying, from this apparently banal and ‘poor’ context, to make something highly special emerge into visibility. It seeks a spiritual subject that has no image (although a stereotypical image of God exists: white, male, old, bearded etc, despite how this contradicts the notion of god being an entity beyond tangibility and visual perception and somehow ‘everyone’).  Making this artwork was cheap; the advertisements were free and other than the cost of a few telephone calls it appears to be a simple, highly economic method of producing something fantastic; the ultimate image.   It also meant that at least part of the artwork was already circulating accessibly within the public sphere as people perhaps stumbled across Chodzko’s advert whilst looking for a cheap fridge.  Gallery viewers could only ever access the terminal report of this process, missing its immediacy, yet imagining its affect as accidental encounter by Loot users.
Its status is perhaps as an artwork ‘made by others’ but it can also be read as a sociological experiment.  What appears as image(s), in response to Chodzko’s particular request, also seems to bypass, mistranslate, or frustrate the question. Perhaps then the response fails to satisfy the question?  Perhaps this is not surprising when the request has been placed in such an insalubrious marketplace?  None of the individual images received seem to correspond to our cliché of god’s appearance, but maybe together, collectively we have found something that transcends that.

From: The Sacred and the Traversal of Social Space, Andrew Wilson (catalogue essay for Proxigean Tide, Adam Chodzko’s solo exhibition at Tate St Ives, 2008):
“…The notice for the look-alike contest did however result in an exchange and a coming together…The wording of Chodzko’s notice is as matter-of-fact as the responses. He is not documenting delusion but belief, self-will and the understanding that a cohesive society relies on manifestations of the sacred – whether religious or not (and in this respect the god, as the project underlines, can be any sort of god)…”

♦

From: an interview with John Slyce, (‘Looking in the Wrong Place,’ Dazed & Confused, August, 1999 no.57, pp.100–106):
“…J.S: Embracing failure to that degree seems a risky move given the high stakes of the art game in the last ten years?
AC: … in the end I really don’t see it as failure – I see it as a retrieval of what someone else might deem to be failure and about finding a pleasure and pattern in things going out of control. I really like stuff that other people reject or overlook for how that behaviour (a loss of desire) then inhabits the spurned object.  I know I’m not going to coincide with my object of desire. It can’t happen. But searching, playing the pseudo-sociologist or anthropologist creates a by-product.  So, inadvertently, you’ve found the answer to the question: The God Look-Alike Contest doesn’t find a single satisfactory image of god. But perhaps overall you do glimpse something; within the space of the searching and the totality of this particular collection of images….”

♦

The God Look-Alike Contest [version I] was exhibited in the following exhibitions:
• 1993: Wonderful Life, Lisson Gallery, London.
• 1994: High Fidelity, Kohji Ogura Gallery, Nagoya
• 1994: High Fidelity, Röntgen Kunst Institut, Tokyo
• 1996: Brilliant, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA between 22 October, 1995 and 7 January, 1996.
• 1997: Sensation, Royal Academy, touring to Berlin Hamburger Bahnhof 1998/99 and then to Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, 2 October 1999 to 9 January 2000.
• 2003:   General Ideas, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco.
• 2006:  Belief and Doubt, The Aspen Art Museum, Colorado.

The International God Look-Alike Contest.   [version II] was exhibited in the following exhibitions:
• 1996: For its first exhibition the series was split in two; Half the series was exhibited at Milch Gallery, London and simultaneously the other half was shown in Rome, as part of the British Waves (New British Artists in Rome) exhibition, curated by Mario Condognato.
• 2002: Tabu, Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland
• 2005: Seeing God. Museum of Fine Arts of Thurgau, Kartause Ittingen, Warth, Switzerland
• 2010: Kraftwerk Religion. Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden.

It was also featured in:
Rob Legge, ‘The Faces of God’, The Independent on Sunday, London, 19 September, 1993     pp.40-41,
and was discussed and reproduced in many cultural magazines; Dazed and Confused, Arena, ID, The Face, etc etc