If it won´t fly, try using it as a reducing machine
Collaboration with Lutz-Rainer Müller
One exhibition at four galleries in Hamburg: Galerie der HFBK, Trottoir, Elektrohaus, Kunstverein St.Pauli
By splitting up one exhibition and distributing it to four different galleries in Hamburg, Germany, with the pertaining four openings happening simultaneously, the two artists created a problem for themselves; how to be present at four places at the same time.
Connecting this problem to the history and development of speed as a driving force in human development, as described by e.g Paul Virilio, the artists decided to stage themselves as flight pioneers on a set of souvenir plates (souvenir plates referring to the remembering of historical events) together with fragments of incompatible flight machines.
The artists produced a total of 200 plates, 40 pieces of each of the 5 designs. The plates were shattered, the pieces mixed and divided into four different packages that were delivered to the galleries. Consequently, not only the different designs were present in every gallery but also very likely pieces of each individual plate.
The artists then took on the roles of archaeologists trying to organize and present the development of their self-made ruins. In this presentation the specific characteristics of the galleries were taken into consideration. This way each gallery got a unique exhibition, even though issuing from the same basic principles.
To be able to communicate between the galleries, all four were equipped with a fax machine with integrated telephone.
The possibility of travelling in zero time, being able to beam oneself from one place to another through a doorway of some sort, has always been a fantasy for human beings, and has inspired numerous science fiction writers and film makers. Yet the high speed with which a journey like that takes place would probably have its consequences - the utopia always has a dystopian counterpart.
In this exhibition, an emphasis is placed on the deformation of objects by - to a certain extent staged - high-speed transfer of substance. The artists have tried to produce corresponding interiors (referring to different historical eras - such as rococo, made with the help of a fax machine) with the materials at hand in three of the four galleries. In this process, parts have been burned and distorted in order to examine the differences between being present and being represented, as well as the constant strive for the omnipresent.
HFBK Gallery
The HFBK Gallery was used as a starting point from where a burned piece of paper was faxed to the other exhibition venues. After being sent so many times that it could be used as wallpaper in the other galleries, the original piece of paper was eventually framed and hung in the gallery.
Further the broken plates were placed on a working table made of a sawed-out piece of the gallery wall and two chairs. The tabletop was initially used as a working table where the porcelain pieces were arranged according to parameters like size, shape and design. Later, an electric drill was fastened underneath the table, drilling for 5 seconds in 5-minute intervals. When the drill was in operation, the table started shaking, bringing all the pieces to chaos and also making the table move around in the room. The two chairs might refer to the two archaeologists no longer being present or able to work.
The missing piece in the wall created a kind of paradoxical door, revealing a wish to be beamed through a doorway to somewhere else, but eventually only reaching 25 cm further into the wall. During the opening, the fax machine, which was placed on top of that same wall, retrieved some of the wallpaper pieces that it had sent the previous days, letting the single pieces of paper slowly glide to the floor.
Trottoir
In the gallery called Trottoir the artists set up a window exhibition. Behind the glass façade, the pieces of broken plates were laid out organized according to size, all of them with the oval part up, reminding of a cloud of smoke.
Behind the plates was an office desk on which the fax machine was placed, and a lot of the faxed wallpaper laid spread out on the desk.
In the far corner of the room an introvert band played all evening of the opening, seemingly for themselves, as if they were practising. As the gallery was closed (nobody could enter) the music was not audible to the outside. Instead, it was transmitted to the Elektrohaus through the phone of the fax machine.
Elektrohaus
The burned piece of paper that had been faxed from the HFBK-gallery to a fax machine at the elektrohaus a couple of hundred times, was there used as wallpaper. The fax machine itself was placed on an amplifier, and a telephone-microphone assembly transmitted the concert played at the Trottoir, although quite distorted. The fax machine became the lead singer in a band that was playing somewhere else. Behind the bar counter, a fragment of every plate design was hung on the wall.
Some parts of the shattered plates were glued together to function as an ashtray. The rest of the porcelain pieces given to the Elektrohaus were randomly spread out on the floor.
A burned shirt hanging in the entrance of the gallery could be the remnants of the artists´ working clothes, damaged during their (impetuous) experiments on high-speed movement.
Kunstverein St. Pauli
The shattered plate fragments handed out to the gallery staff of Kunstverein St. Pauli had been glued together in an attempt to reconstruct the original function of the fragments at hand – the souvenir plate. As they were only given a random quarter of the total amount of plate pieces, none actually fitted together, and pieces of one plate were most likely distributed to all participating galleries. Picking up the logic of cubism as a method to depict one object from multiple angles, the plates both became a symbol of omnipresence and also a concrete way of reconstructing one object being at multiple places simultaneously.
The plates were presented on a shelf made out of two pieces of baseboard from the room, and neon lights taken from the ceiling. The opposite wall was covered with the faxed wallpaper, and the fax machine stood in the middle of the room.
