An artist on a residency in
a center for curatorial studies.
A poem which denies all sense
and reason.
A dada-esque poem which is
denied all sense and reason.
A hobby horse without a job.
An unemployed hobbyhorse,
denied by sense and reason.
An artist on a residency in a
Center for Curatorial Studies.
Version 2, May 8, 2013
Wall Piece
In this text, I will refer to myself as
“artist ” – not because I necessarily
identify as such, but because in my
current affair with CCS, the Center for
Curatorial Studies, I am referred to as
the artist -in- residence .
***
This year’s spring exhibitions at CCS
are composed of the 14 student-curated exhibitions and projects (entitled
less like an object more like the weather)
and duo-solo show Monogamy (Sarah
Pierce and Gerard Byrne, curated
by Tirdad Zolghadr). The exhibitions
opened on March 24 and are currently
occupying both CCS exhibition spaces, the Hessel Museum and CCS Galleries. The shows will be on view until
May 21. My artist residency began
on February 1 and will end on May 31.
***
An artist on a residency in a
Center for Curatorial Studies.
A poem which denies all sense
and reason – the first sentence
describing my current situation and
whereabouts, the latter being part of
a quote taken from the website www.
poemofquotes.
com, host to the
Dada
Poetry Generator. This web application randomly deconstructs the syntax of existing paragraphs and spits
out a somewhat nonsensical (hence
surfacely dada-esque) six-liner. The
Dada in Poetry Generator, so explains
the website, is inspired by the randomness at work in the naming of the
movement in 1916, which was – according to urban legend – a product of
mere chance.
(Wikipedia did not
help me backing up
my wording here. Instead, double-checking the accuracy of
“urban legend” gave
way to a trickier, yet much more interesting question. One day in 1916, two
years before publishing
the Dada Manifesto,
Tristan Tzara – on the
quest for a suitable title
– threw a paper knife
at a French Dictionary
and the blade stuck at
precisely the entry for
“hobbyhorse”, “dada”
in French. Another less
exciting theory says that Tzara, being
Romanian, frequently used the words
da da, yes in the Romanian language.
According to wiki, the term “urban
legend” is used to “differentiate modern legend from traditional folklore in
pre-industrial times”. Whether the of
naming Dada is thus located in “folkloric” or “modern” times, largely depends on whether one would count
the movement as belonging to art
history (hence Modernism) or human
history (Modernity) in first place – and
on whether one then relates to pre- or
post-industrial times in regard to the
manifestation of Futurism or the advent of the industrial revolution).
Back to the merely clarifying intention
of this introduction. A total of fiftynine artist s, respectively their works,
are currently on display at the Hessel
Museum and CCS Galleries (in less
like an object more like the weather and
Monogamy), including writers, dancers,
designers, a lawyer and a mathemati-
artist on a residency /
the poem which denies all sense
and reason / used the Dada Poetry
cian. I, the
Generator to render excerpts from
freely available PR materials of those
fifty-nine artist s into nonsensical
poetry. I am publishing this volume of
poems as a Portable Document Format on a customized and logo-printed
USB wristband (together with a karaoke
instrumental and the
most recent version
of this essay) on the
occasion of the bookshop project Point
of Sale, curated by
second-year student
Karly Wildenhaus. It’s also the third of
my responses as part of this residency.
***
One can look at this PDF-volume of
poems as a sort of immaterial group
show of fifty-nine textual representations of the respective artist ic (and
other) practices. Linked only by time,
space and occasion and denied all
sense and reason, the semantic
leftovers of marketing vocabulary,
high-speed-career-achievement-sumups and the omnipresent International
Art English may reverberate the sensation an artist might feel struck by
on a residency in a center for
curatorial studies.
***
Extracts from public relational texts
were swiftly gathered on the internet,
press releases from gallery or institutional pages, quasi-encyclopedic
entries from big muscle museum
websites, online articles, blogs. While
trying to prioritize texts that are more
of a descriptive and less interpretive
nature, I noticed four main categories: 1) there’s the big names that have
made it to encyclopedias like Britannica or collection-based entries on
power structures like Tate or MoMA.
The importance of those artists
seems to be located beyond any necessity of introduction or explanation.
Such entries on, say, Bruce Nauman,
are rather partying an success- and
eventful biography peppered with a
master piece here and an exciting
turning point there, usually concluding with a list of overall and institutional achievements. 2) Then there’s
the well-covered mid-career artist
with a rather boring array of efficient
sources and well-written coverage. 3)
The seriously emerging artist s are
press release-heavy, with less reflexive materials to be found and more
immediate, opinionated, at times passionate responses on Frieze and such.
4) There’s not much to be found about
what the work of the (post) web-based
artists really is about, but one does
get an idea of what their ideas might
be “based on”, typically illustrated by
a well-groomed event log.
(a jump)
I have been thinking about how I experienced art and design before entering
into the academic structure, hoping
to find clues as to whether a sort of
innate (“unreflected”) creativity simply
belonged to me or whether my creative pursuits were more the product
of intent and determination, common
symptoms of adulthood.
During my childhood and teenage years, my creative output was entirely motivated by love and affection: I
would only engage in “creative” activities (yet obsessively so) when making
gifts for friends and family. I would
draw clues from shared experiences,
personal histories, things they liked.
Often the gifts were made for special
occasions and were useful of some
sort, things one could use or wear,
like boxes, candles, pillows, clothing
or accessories. A big rat pillow for my
best friend, as she was forbidden to
get a rat as a pet or a cardboard box in
the shape of that same friend’s favorite bunny that had just passed away,
with 3-dimensional replicas of its head,
limbs and tail attached to the box.
My pre-academic creative drive was
clearly motivated by care and a sense
of usefulness.
***
What kind of “project” do I engage
with (apart from teaching a workshop
on exhibition documentation) as artist -in- residenc e under the rooftop of
an educational institution that is host
to a vast collection of contemporary
art, a museum and exhibitions spaces,
a mind-blowing library and archive
AND a master program for curatorial
studies? The educational beehive and
input madness
indoors is crassly
contrasted by the
remote location of
the Center for
Curatorial Studies on the wooded campus of Bard College along the
Hudson river is. Tirdad Zolghadr, senior academic advisor, had warned me
about, quote, “CCS’ dual vocation of
academic program and curatorial boot
camp”.
I thus approached the residency
loosely inspired by fisherman’s wisdom and a care-ful rekindling of that
pre-academic flame of attention and
generosity. I decided to act in response to the structural effects and
affects of location, building, curriculum, institutional structures, faculty
and students.
***
The first “work” that made sense in
that mindset was a video animation I
conceived to conclude my introductory talk at CCS early on in February.
Entitled “The big rat pillow and a furry
bunny box”, my presentation was built
around the revision of past and recent
works in relation to their potential as
gifts. Invested in the idea of art works
as potential embodiments of sharing and materializations of generosity
above all, screening the video functioned as an applied gesture of “giving”, a work made for this specific occasion and for CCS’ English-speaking
audience.
***
My mother had taken my sister and I
to Hamburg to see Andrew Lloyd
Webber’s musical
CATS in 1990, and
I subsequently immersed myself in the
magical world of dancing and singing cats like only a 10 year old girl
can. I carried the cassette tape of the
German version (Deutsche Originalaufnahme) around with me everywhere
I went and knew (and embarrassingly
so still do) all songs and voices by
heart. The video is a desktop recording of my literal English translation of
the German version of the postmod-
ern elegy
of Gus, The
Theatre Cat.
Gus, the
old theatre
cat, was the
embodiment
of the classic notion of an “artist ic
personality” _ and my first conscious
encounter with art as such.
In his appearance as an aged
stage actor who had lived a long and
intense life on and off stage (booze),
Gus is rhymingly reminiscent of the
good old times when cat theatre (art )
was free of irony and really moved
people, when cat actors (artist s)
were made of heart and soul, not
dough and attitude.
I like to think
that no other
than Gus planted the bittersweet duality of
attraction and
suspicion into little Rebecca’s understanding of what the art world was all
about.
***
My second response was the result of
a surprisingly organic and effortless
conversation with Marina Noronha,
another graduating second-year student. Talking about the mediation of
her exhibition, we’d discuss about
cross-disciplinary collaborations and
how to
get rid
of the
work
in artwork
altogether.
I ended up taking care of the textual
mediation part of her show, Unless
Otherwise Noted. As a result, I used all
of Marina’s exhibition information (her
curatorial statement, the wall labels, a
photograph, a list of plant names and
an algorithm) with the intent to create
an object that
would function
as a hybrid of
a functional
and autonomous object. A
wall piece that
would make aestehtic sense with the
other works in the show – and serve
as a fully readable display of all relevant information.
***
While reflecting on the hierarchies of
cultural practices and the dissemination of medium specificity amongst my
generation of artists and designers, I
caught myself thinking in exactly those
categories, namely whether the vari-
ous shades of my residential responsiveness weren’t more characteristics
of a designer’s than an artist ’s mind:
the designer as a mediator of given
content on a specific occasion.
***
In the past years, the numbers of artist publications have exploded from
a rather quiet niche into a busy market place. While acknowledging the
sincere efforts (money and time) that
many small publishing houses, publishers, editors, designers are investing in this marginalized cultural publishing, I can’t help but feeling more
and more out of place in this ocean
that used to feel like a bathtub. But
maybe that’s just what happens when
growing up: that endless front yard
turns out not to quite mean the entire
world but rather a fairly small piece of
land, next to another yard and another
street and another house.
The rise of availability, visibility, cheaper production modes and a general
revival of the artist book have unfortunately given way to an increased
parasitical and cynical usage of cultural publishing: many artist books,
institutional publications or galleryinitiated publications are intended as
multipaged business cards above all,
as proofs of legitimacy, output and
“happening”. More so than being mo-
tivated by or concerned with, again,
generosity or a sense of urgency.
***
As with most of my projects, this one,
plugged into your computer or mobile
device, is a test (or experiment, forgive
the bore of that word).
Although “test” or “experiment” only
come close to the word I am trying
to convey, which is the antonym to
German “Kalkül”. In the words of the
German Bourgeoisie, a “Kalkül” is a
calculated act, typically in one’s own
interests and insensible to the people
affected. It is often used as the opposite of “Gefühl” (feeling, sense, emotion), which happens to rhyme with
“Kalkül”, yet only partly describes
what I mean. I am looking for Gefühl in
regard to intent, with a pinch of surprise and frankness, lightness sincere.
This word would thus describe *here*
whether this USB-object and PDFpubliation can be felt as a sincere
promotional hybrid, in a way that make
object and content come together
more efficiently (contemporarily?)
while seeking ways to translate the
artist book’s potential into a gift or
exchange economy beyond the limitations of printed matter.
Logo printed USB drives are promotional objects. Promoting the positive
qualities of the relationship between
giver and taker (be it strategically or
emotionally) is what every gift wants.
The promotional gift is certainly tautological, rarely cynical.
* **
The flash drive
wristband is
accessory,
cover, and an
artist multiple
in the edition
of fifty. The
colors of “Da
Da Da” on
the USB are
Pantone 489 taken from the
colors of the
Pantone 316
covers of the
three publications that accompany the
current Hessel Museum/CCS exhibitions less like an object more like the
weather and Monogamy.
fun of the USB as a performative act:
tune in the karaoke instrumental of
the triple Da while you read, put it on a
loop, read out loud or mix in the rhythmic sound of the desktop printer of
your choice.
Pantone 422
My fiddling with the multi-potential of
a USB drive vs. the
single-potential of
paper was interrupted by a somewhat bumpy associative jump from
the employment
of Dada by the makers of the Poetry
Generator to German New Wave 80s
uber-classic earworm “Da Da Da”, by
TRIO. Lets embrace the multi-media-
–––
The PDF is arranged on US letter format for an easy “print at home” experience under standardized parameters.
The binder clip would like to invite you
to print and clip the volume of poems
at home.
And Maize Yellow is the corporate
color of the Center for Curatorial
Studies.