0 nailing the whatness of absence

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0NAILING THE WHATNESS OF ABSENCE

Nailing the Whatness Of Absence is a monologue that was commissioned by The

University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and first performed during the Jour Fixe of the

department of ArtScience Visualization themed “Art as Research. Research as Art.

Anything goes?” at the Expositur, on May 27, 2011, before an audience of invited

guests. The script below was first published and performed at this very venue (Room

5 ).

Introduction

Good evening_ Hello everyone.

I do know many of you, but introduce myself anyway. I'm Herwig Kopp,

and I'd like to thank you for coming to this presentation of my project for theUniversity of Applied Arts` Master Program of “Art & Science”. It's called

" Nailing The Whatness of Absence" and, as most of you have probably guessed

from the cameras and the lights and your own presence and absence of others,

this is it. This is presenting "The Whatness of Absence' – but where the hell is the

nail?

So, I'm happy, I'm pleased, I'm honored, I'm privileged, I'm really thrilled,

really, to welcome you, officially, to Room Number 5 and not Slaughterhouse 5,

which is, of course, a site-specific project.

I'm going to have a tough time topping the themes and remarks from last

months, but I'll do my best.

I have to begin by saying that I've known Art & Science for many years—more

than a decade – and most of those years, grey zones of Art & Science were my

only collections, even when I didn't want recollections, when I was against the

whole idea that art was built, conceived to be bought and sold, that a collective was

there, trying to buy in – a collective trying to create something out of nothing.



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Later, I refused t0 give a talk about my first prospectus project, with the Einstein

Forum, but preferred to be in their basement at the official welcome and had somebody

else (names, names are important, do not forget the names, contributors, actual owners,

distributors, nests, thankfulness as an economy of collaboration, thankfulness is for

free), Sandra Manhartseder , holding that talk, who was not there, too, but present in a

video she sent in. Some of you may remember that event, when I started making sounds

with Markus Steinkellner (Jakuzi´s Attempt, id) in the cellar during the inauguration for no apparent reason and couldn't stop. It's true.

http://soundcloud.com/gordian-times/answerstoaquestionneverposed

Points to someone in audience.

I know you remember that.

Video BenB from the project Mind – the Gap [0:57min]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWJBQLiLfw0

Pause (thinking like trying to remember faces)

Maybe I am just being erratic. Well, I can't guarantee that it won't happen

again this evening but . . . not now. I'm not choking up, really. I'm . . . just a little dry.

Takes a sip of water, then clears throat. Reading:

The model of Art as Science stimulation, or science as artful theory

construction might be viewed as a representation of the application of only methods, in

particular, in representational cultures. But what is this in between relationships of

diverse artistic and scientific positions, what is forming the line of battle, the formation

of the Holy Armada performing a “Crossing the T” maneuver: Steaming with the enemy

off to the side enables to launch salvoes at the same target with both the forward and

rear turrets, maximizing the chances for a hit. It also makes ranging error less critical

for the ship doing the crossing, while simultaneously more critical for the ship being

crossed.



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Can you be critical about that, besides taking the historical position that such

maneuvers could be outdated ?

(Source: Stephan Brunker)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_T

Isn´t all about providing crucial support for artists whose work has been

rendered invisible because of political content , lack of marketability, or its challenging

inquiry into the nature of art institutions?

Times New Roman 9 in Helvetica 10

The University of Applied Arts` newest project in the Master Program „Art &

Science“ titeled “Art as Research. Research as Art. Anything goes?” is a perfect

example of its commitment to critical and challenging art.

For this project, The University of Applied Arts has selected an artist who is a

bleeding practitioner of this genre, but after substantial blood loss it may not be called

art anymore or is leading somewhere else. Maybe he is just trying to copy things and

paste them into different roles which do not really play a role.

His work is inventive, poignant, and brazen as well as humorous. ( Hahaha –

and blunt. Let´s laugh together Hahaha – participatory culture). Isn´t there enough irony

and postmodern delusion out there? Words, just playing with words. Do we have to

repeat that?Repetition is a weapon. Didn´t we already understand the epistemological gain?

Didn`t we buy it? Is this a role, ruthless honesty, or a brand strategy? He's an artist who

takes no prisoners, even when he works in the belly of the beast. His performative

critiques are meticulously researched and tinkered portraits of institutions, revealingly



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appropriated from original sources, yet they're often, they're often also tantalizingly

ambiguous. And he's also successfully explored innovative models for artistic practice

that would liberate artists from the structures of traditional object production.

By engaging him to develop a project relevant to a foundation — and to deliver

it here as well for a public educational institution which got privatized lately — the

ArtScience Visualization team (namely Valerie Deifel , Bernd Kräftner, Juliana Herrero

& Virgil Widrich – names, don´t forget the names…) is endorsing Herwig Kopp´s role

as an institutional critic. But maybe that´s too much of an label which leads you away, posing a trap for instant categorization, putting things in drawers – leaning back,

reluctantly, because of an eager impression of having understood something .

It´s a battle of lost Esperanza. A desperate move on mowed lawns floating to

avoid second Trafalgars. Why not playing it safe? Why not reversing course in poor

visibility?

Art is nothing but decisive fleet action, science nothing but crossing all the

T's and dotting all the I's. – or was it the other way around? Maybe it is about

understanding. Maybe its more about the „nothing but“, about loosing the point of view

in an investigation going to deep into the study of multifactorial processes, relations,

applications, developments, methods, media and organization in researching off-

controversial societal thematic space which is formed here, now by you and me and

Room 5.

Is understanding an art? Artistic epistemology – is there such a thing?

Let´s talk about artistic research: The phrase itself – derived from wording in

successive university laws for almost the last forty years – thus reflects a particular

responsibility of the state-financed arts universities, and one which, in the more recent

formulations, explicitly aligns this with research.[...] The term, „Entwicklung und

Erschließung der Künste“ (development and valorization of arts), as a proxy for

research with a focus on the arts, is very much an Austrian formulation. Terms

elsewhere vary, depending on the country, the discipline, and in some cases the

approach being taken. In certain parts of Europe, the term artistic research has been

adopted to describe this newly emerging area of research activity. But the term is only

one of a number that seek to delineate the distinctiveness of the territory: for others, the

inclusion of the word “practice” is key – hence the use of adjectives such as “practice-

based” and “practice-led” to characteri se the research. The British s, the American z.

http://www.fwf.ac.at/de/public_relations/printprodukte/info/info68-09-01.pdf#pag...

It is always researching something , things we already know of, heard of, seen,

assume, feel at our fingertips. Something to record, remember, store. Concepts which

indicate that something is vanishing, so it has to be caught. The Unknown is excluded

but summoned as a whip to faster dissect and utilize a given „something“. Foster

dissection – vivisections are only beautiful in live speech.

Researching what is not here, pinning it positively down like a rare specimen

might be a real challenge.



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Something will be different when you read this again later yourself as a script,

this script , a less conspicuous socio-technological rupture. A prerequisite of your thirst

in becoming the text, interweaving your results with a departure of no return, the gun

point of research, the point blank of artistic range, the vanishing point of representation.

Don´t loose it, when you are lost. Challenge your position. Your niche is your

muscle. Be a bulldozer.

Your central perspective is survival.

Spaces and races.Point A to Point B. Nothing more.

(Source: Peter Isotalo)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanishing_Point_(1971_film )

Herwig, please?

/ Artist

Turns to left, nods gravely, then reads:

This evening represents a sequel of a very satisfying project. It is the

appropriate moment to thank the Einstein Forum for its support. My hope, however,

is that such thanks are unnecessary. I was commissioned by the Einstein Forum to

do a certain job. My hope is that the Einstein Forum has found that job well done.

What do I, as an artist, provide? What do I satisfy?

It does not really matter who is speaking. It does not really matters who is

repeating this. My presence is not necessarily truth-bearing it is interest-bearing. It

matters for the conditions, the economics of exchange, the performative bodily illusion

of dissolving with a present audience of bodies here, in Room 5. One body. One



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fragmented whole without essence. Of course just a loud thought ( your thought whilst

reading and understanding this is silent ). It´s not that I obstructed the door to be your

obstacle for entering an ( stuttering ) interactive space of art. To be that interaction means

exposing oneself, to count on some kind of presence, to play with presence. Pleasance,

nice to meet you.

It´s not about economies of access. It´s about economies of access and excess.

It´s about the economy of contradictions, dichotomies. Contradictory politics of excess,

restriction as means to control the axis of excess.What gives you excess? What is in there in between the doors where

everybody wants to be in? What is the what in the question about legitimacy? What is

the whatness of horse?

Horse is the whatness of allhorse.

Streams of tendency and eons they worship.

Joyce J., Ulysses, Ch. 9, Scylla and Charybdis

What rules do you have to follow to become a certain function? What is your

form to comply with function? Function follows form, whatever others may have told

you.

http://academics.triton.edu/faculty/fheitzman/tallofficebuilding.html

You are forms. Forget your purpose. Fate is form. Is function overrated, a

gimmick, a gadget, a marketing tool (a screw driver, a wrench?) to sell your emptiness?

A safe haven? A representational building? A safe house with no doors and high walls

besides a military complex?

The immediate answer to those questions can be found in the function of

Art & Science and it´s intersections. But if I serve those functions, it is not because I

have defined my activity as a service. Those functions are generally fulfilled in the

exchange that constitutes any kind of patronage. They are fulfilled because the

professional prestige I, as an artist, augment when my name is publicized by a patron is

identical to the prestige they acquire by being associated with a particular kind of art.



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Its the same quantity of the same currency: a profit in moral legitimacy generated by

activities with “higher” aims; a profit in intellectual legitimacy generated by the

method of self-reflection; a profit in social legitimacy generated by association with

exclusive tastes and practices; and a profit in professional legitimacy generated by

demonstrations of competence in our respective spheres of activity.

Maybe I am just putting my worst fears on display.

Takes deep breath to continue—

/ Critic

Thank you . . .Tums to left.

. . . Herwig, for an exemplary presentation.

It is important to pose and a create crossroads emerging for finding or

rejecting answers. Find emerging markets – quite often different from existential

positions, points of convergence, respective specialized knowledge, ivory towers in the

amygdala of representational productive and reproductive conditions. But it is

necessary to fall out of the role given to an artist and jeopardize the relationships with

the hands that feed you? Isn´t institutional critique also a method, an illusory step out of

the system to cement a certain position and entertain those who are bored by routine?

It is difficult to imagine what a critical art practice could be after the end of the

Noughties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_(decade )

One factor in the demise of radical practice may be art's own collaboration with

the forces of spectacle culture. If visibility has become arts primary horizon of



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aspiration, then for any radical aesthetic practice to be historically convincing it must

now define itself in opposition to that culture.

Tonight we are considering artists whose projects may once meet this criterion,

artists whose interventions may invite the viewer to recognize the fundamental

conditions of art and its inability to resolve its contradictions. As a radical contestation

of the hegemonic ordering of experience, your practice will demonstrate that

the desire to commemorate and to collect — which we inscribe as a grotesque echo of

the fate(reading code generated by OCR software scanning Andrea Fraser´s published

monologue)

_ TZ|4(2I§

S-IJOAdIUO SS Sill U-s"U0awe: am 2

of radical critique — is inextricably bound up with forms of culturally engineered

adulation operating at the very center of artistic production and reception. Undulation.

We thus invert and counter all of the artistic fallacies that hindsight and history have

made evident. Indeed, it would be difficult to conceive of any practice that could

surpass this as a synthesis of the most complex and radical artistic projects of the near

future as well as the coming 21st century. And it's a pleasure to introduce you to this

evening spectacle. You do not need me. You do not need him.

Looks to right.

/ Artist

Um . . .

Turns quickly to lefl.

. . . thank you. Um, I don't want to sound coquettish—this could easily come off the



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wrong way—but as an artist I'm always disappointed. Even though

I say the end result isn't important, I'm never satisfied. But I guess that's why I

keep trying. As an artist, I try to create an autonomous space in which a critical

position can be made dear. People come to see my work, maybe they spend some

time. I hope I can make people feel involved, but it's not about interactivity. I give

something to people, but I don't expect communication. I hope I can make

people think, but I don't want to be didactic—I don't want to make political art, but what

I say is political. I don't want to intimidate or exclude people, but frontal instruction – atheatrical form – may intimidate and exclude people. I want to implicate people in my

work — I mean, immerse them in a world. That art of immersion could be my political

statement.

A few days later, a woman named Sue was to wash a different T-shirt from one

of the Lisbon shows when she noticed that the tour dates included several boldface

numbers. Fans quickly interpreted the sequence as a Los Angeles telephone number.

People who called it heard a recording of a newscaster announcing. „Presidential adress:

America is born again,“ followed by a distorted snippet of what could only be a new

Nine Inch Nail song.

Frank Rose (2011) The Art of Immersion, W.W. Norton & Company p. 29



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(Source: Ryan Tanaka)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(album )

What's most important is not what people see in my work, but what they see when they

confront reality again. I work in between reality and fiction. So, why am I an artist? I

guess it's because I take a critical position toward the world. It's not about hope. It's

about showing my distrust with dominant discourses.

But maybe that´s too simple. Maybe it´s a complex. An industrial-artificial

complex, inverted AI,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_(disambiguation )

a multi-component compound, more a suspension than a dissolution, where policy and

monetary relationships between legislators of artistic production, scientific forces and

the industrial sector that supports them collide. These relationships include socio-

political contributions, institutional approval for budget spending, lobbying to support

bureaucracies and beneficial legislation and oversight of the industry. It is a type of

amalgam triangle without corners, a semi-liquid cornerstone of modern practices

founding on hollow ground.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex

/ Critic

Shaking head.

How much information can you receive from one artist in a few minutes?

Usually, when an artist explains his work, it lessens the allure. But that's hardly the case

in this case. His likeable bombardment is an art experience in itself. If there would be a

facebook button attached, I would click it.

http://www.facebook.com/herwig.kopp



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The simultaneity of thoughts passing through the brain is never easy to capture,

especially if the brain in question is not a single entity, but a multitude.

Ask Antonio Negri spinning Spinoza.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitude

(Cetrimonium Bromide; Source: Edgar 181)

It´s topical medication. Free from prescription.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ointment

Well, he's in possession of just such a remarkable organisation. Tons of

fragments claiming to be a game. Being a game to be collected. No supporter can

possibly keep up with the unnerving complexity. But I'll try.

Simply put, his work is excessive. And the best part is, you don't have to worry

about the meaning of it all. Mind – the gap´s emphasis on the dash for instance. The

connecting principle in question is heavily tortured to play the archimedean point about

meaning. The trash in between words symbolizing how a world view arises, how reality

is shaped, how normality is conceived. Aren´t we over symbolizations? (Here the z is

ok)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_point

Works that rise to a level of humanistic allegory significant for all of us, even

while we may not know exactly what they mean.

Looks to right.

I think we're all extraordinarily lucky to be able to honor here this evening. It is



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already evening, isn´t it? You don´t see that clearly in summer. Especially when the

weather was as warm and charming as today. 5 degrees more and it would be too much.

A touch too much. What a beautiful evening to meet and greet the artists.

Walks around and greeting every one of the present people, shaking hands with

each of them. Those who refrain are getting hugs.

There is not much to say about the center of signifiance, or the Signifier in

person, because it is a pure abstraction no less than a pure principle; in other words, it is

nothing.G. Deleuze, F. Guattari (1987): A thousand plateaus. Capitalism and

Schizophrenia. Univ. of Minnesota Press. Chapter: 587B.B.-A.D. 70: On Several

Regimes of Signs. p. 115

/ Artist

Looks to lefl.

Thank you, its, uh, uh, thank you, uh.

Speaking in a painfully slow, almost stuttering voice.

If I, uh, if I, uh, if I, uh, deserve, uh, any of this, uh, I think that it can only

be because, uh, because I have, uh, finally arrived, uh, at a point where, uh, my

work has become, uh, has become, uh universal. It's about, uh, it's about, the

desire, uh, of all human beings, uh, to be free and, uh, to achieve, uh, to achieve,

uh, to achieve a kind of, um, self-realization; uh, to achieve, uh, to achieve, uh,

to achieve . . . something. It's about achievement.

And, uh, all of my work, uh, investigates, uh, different possibilities, uh,

of what it means, uh, to imagine yourself, uh, within the broadest possible

parameters.

And, uh, um, that's why I, uh, I don't like to, uh, to talk about my work. I

made it, and, uh, and, uh, I hope, I hope, uh, that`s enough.

/ Critic

Oh, maybe it is not enough. It is so much more than not enough. It is so much more that

I or any single person or the most devoted public may reckon with. But usually we try to

conceal our embarrassment.

Reads playfully:

216 217

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BUO $5

$15313 U

3\flOJ JM H 3

Arma virumque cano. Of arms and the man I sing. For opening doors on new

realities and reawakening our dreams, it is my privilege to confer on you the very

highest honor. As an artist, and as a friend of Fordism — a myth, driving around in

Capri at night, cereals in the morning, making babies at the beaches before sunset in the



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muddy waters of the blue lagoon.

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/the-ford-capri-as-an-artists-muse/

Multum ille et terris iactatus et alto vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob

iram. This man was battered helplessly both on land and at sea by the viciousness of the

higher powers, thanks to the obdurate wrath of Juno the savage. (No idea what car Juno

would drive)

Publius Vergilius Maro, Aeneid I, 1 – 33

/ Artist

Oh stop it! Stop it! You're embarrassing me!

/ Critic

Mumbling:

Musa, mihi causas memora..., "O Muse, recount to me the causes..."

That's what l love about the guy: his modesty!

You know, the last time I went to his studio, he'd been working. It was full of

new work. But I was at a loss. It was so different, it was so new. So I asked him to

give me a little guidance. Well, he paused for a minute and then he said, “I have

to think because I don't want to give you the propaganda."

/ Artist

Undresses partly.

No, I'm not shy anymore. I learned a very simple social strategy. The trick is

to say as little as possible to as few people as possible and to keep moving. That

way, it looks like l'm circulating when I'm actually just walking away.

Breaks into a big smile, waves, and pretends to leave the podium.

No, seriously, l’m honored—really, I'm honored—to be, ehem, honored

here this evening.

You know, “remember me" is what all artists whisper in their work. It's a

mark you want to leave in the world. It's still you even when you're not you anymore.

When you're gone. If my work really has brought me indifference, that's what it

means. If not, it has failed me at the deepest level.

So, remember me.

/ Critic

It was so right, so now. I wanted to take it home. We want various things of

art—to reflect the world, to perfect the world — and of artists—to be one of us, to be

better than us. Well, the fact is, you are better than us. You more beautiful than we are,

you more successful, you are much better artists with a much more interesting life.

You are our fantasy. You live our fantasies for us.



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/ Artist

Strips down loosing the jacket, the tie, the shirt revealing an light orange T-shirt

with the words: „Wir planen diesen Schritt um den sich ändernden Bedürfnissen

unserer Kunden so effizient und wettbewerbsfähig wie möglich Rechnung zu tragen.“

Reading:

We plan this step to take the changing needs of our customers into account,

being as efficient and competitive as possible.

István hat jetzt Martins Job, Die Zeit, 28.07.2005 Nr.31

http://www.zeit.de/2005/31/schweinfurt

I'm not a person today. I'm an object in an artwork. And it is largely not mine.

Steps away from the podium and stands motionless for 15 seconds.

/ Critic

That's great! Isn't he great?! He's great! Exciting work.

In the end, a good artist is a rich artist and a rich artist is a good artist. But for

me, it's also about creating space for freewheeling people with the guts to invest in their

dreams. I love that kind of vision. I think we all do. The thrill, the fantasy, the sleek

world where everything falls into place. He is staggeringly corporate, breathtakingly

professional and eager to entertain. And I do hope he'll say a few words to us thisevening.



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Looks to right.

/ Artist

Yeah, I'll say a few words.

I used to think that I was changing the world.

Laughs.

No, I'd just like to say that, um, I think the only interesting people are the

people who say nothing. Or just less. Yeah, that's what I think. I really like that piece

Nauman did—you know that piece? Um, The true artist helps the world by revealing

mystic truths. And you go, oh, yeah, great. And then you go, oh God, oh fuck, you

know, what is this shit – or Burden nailed to a Beetle in the 70ies.

(Source: Robert Couse-Baker)



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N0, I love saying a few words at events like this.

Okay, here're a few more words. How about, “—„ That's a great statement

anywhere, right?

Right?!

Well, why don't you all say nothing now! Shut up! N0t one word. Do n0t think.

Do not breathe. Cease to exist. Start with your fingers, then your hands...

Steps away from podium and closes the eyes, closes the mouth, then turns around and

raises slowly the arms and shakes the palms and fingers.

I love you all.

Okay, how about nothing more, please? Hey, I'm not being funny. You know

that, don't you? Look, I'm just trying to do my fucking best.

Where`s my cheque?

/ Critic

It will be sent to your bank account by our secretary, Sonja Orman.

Yes, yes and you always do do your, your fucking best.

You were our first major component when we started combining art, and we

considered it an act of sheer courage. It was “difficult” work—it was totally grotesque!

In a regime of signs practice always appeals to several combined regimes, in

other words, how every regime of signs or semiotic is concretely mixed. But how is

nothingness mixed? Or remixed? How is what is left out and left over blended? Can we

be blended by curiosity, spite, irony, ecstasy?

There is nothing to explain, nothing to interpret. It is the pure abstract

machine of a twilight state. White wall/black hole? But depending on the combinations,

the wall could just as well be black, and the hole white. The balls can bounce off a wall

or spin into a black hole. Even upon impact they can have the relative role of a hole in

relation to the wall, just as when they are rolling straight ahead they can have the

relative role of a wall in relation to the hole they are heading for. They circulate in the



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white wall/black hole system. Nothing in all of this resembles a face, yet throughout the

system faces are distributed and faciality traits organized. Nevertheless, the abstract

machine can be effectuated in other things besides faces, but not in any order, and not

without the necessary foundation.

G. Deleuze, F. Guattari (1987) A thousand plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

Univ. of Minnesota Press. Chapter: Year Zero: Faciality p. 169

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2bPTs8fspk

Derrida “What Comes Before the question..?” Video (till 4min 10)

The Foundation.

Faces. Cassavetes knew how to look into faces.

Feces. Human digestive products. Recognizable, sellable, lighter than gold.

Hulls with black breaches staring into the night shouting silently for help. Loose your

face, become dimensionless. Get recycled.

/ Artist

Yeah, well, you know I really do appreciate the support. It gets harder and

harder to be an artist. Attention can be incredibly cruel, from critics, and even

other artists, who think they're so superior.

I mean, if I'm such shit and my work is such shit, then why don't you just

leave me alone?

220 22!

/ Critic

But if you're really bad you tell the truth and people don't want to hear the truth.

If you're honest about how stupid and fucked over life is, you end up in the tabloids. I

don't go looking for you. It just comes in a big stinking tidal wave. I'm used to it. It's

boring.



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/ Artist

I just want to say that my real achievement is getting up in the morning;

staying alive and not giving up. Sure, I've had a few good moments workwise,

but nothing I'd consider a masterpiece. Let's keep things in perspective. The level

here is pretty minor. But at least I haven't fallen in with the system.

I should probably also say that my current project does not rely on public

funds.

Your work has the power to change lives. It changed mine.

Art with both emotional depth and real political belief is anathema to an art

world as cynical as ours. If mainstream artists (and critics) often reproduce the

values they claim to oppose, then perhaps only those artists who have been forced

to remain on the margins can reveal the true nature of power.

/ Artist

Back behind the podium.

Recognition is really weird.

/ Critic

Which Charade you may expect? Which car thou shalt drive, if the destination

is not within grasp? Behind which curtain do you hide? The ascription of these titles

exceeds determining whether the tools of the trade in question are microscopes and test-

tubes, cafes and cigarettes, or easels and oil-paints. Rather they identify the kind of

thinking that each group practices.

In physics horror vacui, or plenism, is a theory first proposed by Aristotle in

the Fourth book of Physics (or Physica) that nature abhors a vacuum, and therefore

empty space would always be trying to suck in gas or liquids to avoid being empty. The

theory was widely accepted for a long time and supported by Galileo Galilei [citation



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needed]. His pupil Evangelista Torricelli stated in 1644 that the level of mercury in a

closed tube was dependent on the pressure of surrounding air. In 1647 Blaise Pascal

proved this notion in his famous vide dans le vide (“emptiness in emptiness”)

experiment.

The Magdeburg Hemispheres used by Otto von Guericke in 1650 were seen

by some as proof that Aristotle's theory was not correct (see more on this topic in

history of thermodynamics).

For a scholarly discussion Leviathan and the Air-Pump, by Shapin andSchaffer 1985, is particularly instructive in the 17th century debate between Hobbes,

supporting the plenum, and Boyle's experimental demonstration of the vacuum.

In visual art, horror vacui (literally: fear of empty spaces, perhaps represented

by white spaces, also known as cenophobia) is the filling of the entire surface of an

artwork with detail.

Who is speaking? Who am I referring to? Who is to adress in saying good

bye, in embracing absence? Who bids farewell to fellow artist Vladimir Vetrov, the

Vertov of valediction?

Bonjour Farewell (waives).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farewell_Dossier



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Well, thank you. Thank you for your dedication, for your vision, for your life.

I think we all must dare, as artists do, to break free of the past and to create a better

future, rooted in values that never change. That`s the great lesson our artists teach us.

I want to say again to our guests how very, very much we enjoy having all of

you here for this celebration and tribute and recognition and absolute delight in artistswho represent not only the best of the arts, but truly the very best that comes from

within the spirit of science.

/Artist

All known human societies establish social order by punishing cheaters and

norm violators. In recent years, neuroeconomists have discovered important

components of the neural circuitry underlying human norm obedience and norm

enforcement. The lecture will document that the prefrontal cortex - a brain area

particularly well developed in humans - is key in this human ability. Non-invasive

down-regulation of neural activity in prefrontal cortex reduces norm compliance despite

the fact that individuals are still able to distinguish between "right" and "wrong".

Neuroeconomic research on young children - whose prefrontal cortex is not yet well

developed - shows similar patterns. These results thus indicate a dissociation between

the ability to obey social norms and the knowledge of the content of the social norms,

which complicates the attribution of responsibility for norm violations.

Ernst Fehr, "The Neuroeconomics of Social Norm Compliance"

http://www.neuroeconomics.nyu.edu/papers/FehrPoster.pdf

That´s all, really.

Nothing goes. Anything will went.

Thanks again to everyone and especially to our wonderful pianist.

Thank you, and good night.

Exit.



Source :

„Official Welcome“ is a monologue of Andea Fraser that was commissioned by The

MICA Foundation and first performed during a reception at the home of Barbara

Morse, the president of the Foundation, and her husband, Howard Morse, on

November 28, 2001, before an audience of invited guests. The script was first published

in the MICA Foundation Newsletter 1, no. 2 (Fall 2001). http://performativekunst.akbild.ac.at/Portal/texte/official-welcome-andrea-fraser

All the pictures CC BY-NC 3.0 by Herwig Kopp, unless indicated differently.

0 nailing the whatness of absence

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