Theo Kaccoufa

Theoland: Essay by B A Carpenter.

Theo Kaccoufa solo show, 2001, Ha Gamle Prestgard, Norway.

Theoland Exhibition Catalogue

It is said that when Franz Kafka read his novels to an audience, he had them in stitches. That might surprise us now, but Kafka was not always the totem of gloominess that he has become. In fact, to portray him so simply is to deny the importance of humour in his work. This humour does more than simply rub shoulders with Kafka’s characteristic cruelty and paranoia: it becomes its agent. Think of his most celebrated story, Metamorphosis, in which the ‘hero’ awakes one morning to find himself transformed into a beetle. Not only is this a tragic predicament, it is also very funny. Furthermore, part of the tragedy stems from the indignity of being the butt of a cruel joke.

Empathy plays an important role in humour. Part of laughter’s function is to dispel the infectious nature of the other man’s bad fortune. By finding humour in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, we are distancing ourselves from the beetle’s predicament, something that we need to do precisely because of our potential for empathy, which threatens to draw his catastrophe closer to home. So humour, anxiety and empathy aren’t simply discrete emotions. They interact.

Consider Theo Kaccoufa’s objects constructed from old bits of furniture. The chair lying on its back, impotently wagging its legs in the air like an upturned tortoise, is animated in the true sense of the word: it has the presence of a Being. The viewer can empathise with its helpless predicament. At the same time, the spectacle is morbidly funny, and this collision of two normally distinct emotions creates a lingering sense of anxiety.

In the same room is a small bed, and, like the chair, this object gives the impression of human presence. This is not simply due to the ghost, the absent user, that any ergonomically designed object suggests, but rather because of the sense of theatre that the sculpture creates. The edges of a slit in the blanket are peeled back, as if held by a speculum during surgery. This wound or eye-like aperture frames a body of water, exactly in the middle of which is a vortex. The shape of the opening, the damp patch that surrounds the whirlpool, and the slit’s position on the sheet create an unsettling impression of unruly, animal physicality, triumphant, abject, or both.

Besides showing examples of his work, this catalogue also contains sketches from his note-books. Many of these illustrate his working-process. Although the impetus to make an object might come from an initial vision, its execution is often technically involved. He takes great care over the ‘workings’ of the apparatus that drives his sculptures. When I spoke to him prior to writing this essay, I was struck by his admiration for engineers and the high level of craftsmanship that some of them display. Figures like Charles Babbage, the father of modern computing and the creator of the Difference Engine, are just as important to him as sculptors like Tinguely or Panamarenko. But his objects don’t seem predominantly engineered, nor to they seem to be products of the rational, waking mind. Although these dream-images have bubbled up through many layers of conscious thought, through the engineer’s concern with taps and dyes and the mechanics of production, they break surface with all the startling iridescence of an instantly realised thought. Not only does Theo have a particular talent for daydreaming, for meditating upon an object with the clear and unprejudiced vision of a child, he is able to communicate a sense of dangerous play. His objects have something of a Surreal character. Like Meret Oppenheim’s Fur Cup and Saucer, or Man Ray’s spiky iron, they betray their birthright, and stand before us, rude reminders of the subconscious jungle.

Theo’s sculptures, rich in theatrical symbolism, demand the spectator’s active and imaginative participation. Although his furniture pieces are constructed from commonplace objects, and are, therefore, obdurately present and mundane, they also offer the possibility of imaginative escape and mental projection. Whether they are doors, draws or wound-like slits, the openings that are so common in Theo’s work create an impression of interiority. Each object seems to offer the potential of entry to another parallel fictive space, the arena of Theo’s dream-world. But nothing is deliberately spelt out or obviously signalled. The exact meaning of the slit or the precise nature of the space under the bed is left open to speculation, but there is no doubt that his objects are concerned with aspects of human experience and imagination, and this is precisely what lends them their unsettling resonance.

The show, Theoland, is divided into two sections. If the upstairs is reminiscent of a Kafka novel or gothic movie, downstairs seems like an altogether more cheerful option. Here, the humour is more overt, as is his interest in technology.

A series of oversized domestic appliances with strange names seem to hint at a future world of at-your-fingertips utility and easy convenience. You might be forgiven for thinking that these objects, with their names full of consonants like a bizarre acronym, are props left over from a naïve 50’s visualisation of ‘Tomorrow’s Home’, yet there is something oddly disturbing about the slow-movement of the crocodile-clips on WPZDVM’s cutting edge, and the steady but unspectacular rotation of PZDVMW’s mincer. Their uncanny and otherworldly lassitude suggests the graceful languor of aquatic life or the minute movements of single celled animals. A close examination reveals that these objects aren’t created with people in mind at all: their design isn’t remotely ergonomic, and in a domestic context they are utterly useless. They have evolved. These formerly domesticated implements have upset the apple-cart, cut Man out of the picture, and gone feral.

This particular nightmare is neither rare nor novel, think of Karel Capek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots, or Stanley Kubrik’s 2001, but it is part of an urgently contemporary debate. Their strange titles, a jumble of W’s P’s and V’s, suggest the annotation of some kind of genetic information capable of being juggled at will. Likewise, their over-life-size scale and faintly menacing air seem to parody the public’s mistrust of GM crops. It is as though contact with ‘manipulated’ fruit and veg has affected their own genetic makeup.

A bizarre group of distorted teddies are more specifically concerned with Genetic Modification. Even their dull metallic sheen has something of the lab about it, being as recognisable as ‘The Future’ as flock wallpaper is reminiscent of a Victorian pub. Normally teddies offer comfort to children: children identify with them, after all, bears are like people with the rough edges knocked off. They have a head, two arms and two legs - in other words, they are sufficiently familiar to be a comforting substitute for human company during the long hours of the night, and Theo’s teddies are very cute indeed. The trouble is, they are also very weird. Surely, no child could empathise with a teddy that had eight octopus legs or griffin’s wings - or so you would have thought. But even the most cursory examination of modern toys reveals a juvenile taste for the bizarre and grotesque. Our shops and t-v sets offer a marvellous spectrum of bad-taste monstrosity from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Butt Ugly Aliens, a world rich in transformation, flux, and shape-shifting oddity. What is genuinely disturbing about Theo’s teddies is a very contemporary paradox. On the one hand, modern man has a great capacity for change, and will readily accept technological intervention and its ramifications. He can embrace cloning and gene therapy, straight cucumbers and bottled eggs: but modern man is also a very sentimental beast, anxious to return to nature, to buy natural and eat natural. This sentimentality is the agent of outrage. The thought of anyone actually giving a grisly eight legs is a horrible thought. We would demand answers. We would want to know who would dare do such a thing. But we would also be interested, and if we are honest, we might recognise something akin to prurience in our curiosity.

Demi-urgical hubris has always been a fascinating character-trait from Prometheus to Dr Moreau. Perhaps these figures capture the imagination because, in some way, we seek to emulate their bold and transgressive behaviour. Perhaps, in the privacy of our own hearts, there is a part of us that would enjoy meddling with the divinely ordained pattern of life, and not for any good reason, but just to see what it was like. This appetite for the monstrous and new has become confused with notions of progress when, perhaps, the real motivation is a simple curiosity and a taste for the grotesque.

Standing in front of his teddy-bears towards the end of our conversation, Theo introduced the subject of genetic modification. Creating an image of an ideal Eden, a brave new world full of over-sized and super-sweet fruit, he surprised me by saying:

I want to see big bunches of grapes

He spread his hands like a boastful fisherman’s to indicate just how enormous he wanted these grapes to be, before adding,

...even if they kill me.

The funny thing was, he was smiling as he said it.