[-empyre-] NEW ART CONTEXTS

[Tanja Brandmayr]

dear empyres

here tanja from stadtwerkstatt. many thanks for shu lea's introduction!

i am posting now a conversation between franz xaver and myself on the  
[loch] (the hole), which was published in STWST's newspaper  
versorgerin, september 2019 issue #123.  
(http://versorgerin.stwst.at/). It is an excerpt of a longer  
conversation.

we understand the project idea we are talking about as a current  
exemplary approach for new art contexts, and for an art that remains  
programmatically  unfinished. the dialogue makes brief reflections: on  
a hole that should remain without deeper reason. and that - and  
moreover! - was not even dug. the text was published on the occasion  
of the showcase extravaganza STWST48x5 STAY UNFINISHED.

here below now the excerpt on [loch] (hole).

hope you enjoy digging the non-existent :)

and hope to hear from your unfinished contexts.


tanja




EXCERPT [LOCH]

Tanja Brandmayr: At the beginning of the planning of STWST48x5 STAY  
UNFINISHED we wanted to dig an actual, oversized hole - as an  
unfinished project. We wanted to invite as many people as possible:  
from STWST people to a whole scene that perhaps no longer fully  
understands what regular cultural activity and art production still  
mean in times of cutbacks and shifts to the right. We also had the  
idea of inviting an international Ars audience, who might have been  
interested in a really different program at the so-called interface of  
art, technology and society. Despite many efforts, it failed on the  
spot where this project of an oversized hole could have been possible.  
We have played through some approaches. Within the framework of  
STWST48x5 STAY UNFINISHED, two projects were actually created that  
resulted from these fundamental considerations - I'm only touching on  
it, because it can be read through in the program itself: My "Deep  
Drilling for Contracts" goes into the symbolic depth of the  
agreements, your "Sandhole" is a concave hollowed out sand hole, which  
finally goes up - in other words, the concave hole receives hydrogen  
radiation from the universe. And so back to the original idea of the  
hole: I like the idea of the hole as an irrational act, as geometry  
directed into the depths, as an unpurified silt of meaning, as an  
unfinished sub-project, as a zero zone in which things connect  
differently than on the surface. What is now a reference to the theory  
that I like to reflect for Quasikunst ... ... What fascinates you  
about this idea of a hole that remains without a deeper reason? Do we  
perhaps even call it the idea of an anti-negative space?

Franz Xaver: By the anti-negative space you mean perhaps the "nothing"  
that connects Quasikunst with Infolab here. Behind this is a recurring  
thought: in order to create something with a sculpture, it is  
necessary to include the negative form, the "non-existent". First you  
have to create space and think the "nothing" - to get space for the  
"something". The surface becomes the transition, the outermost shell,  
the interface. It thus becomes the most important element of a  
sculpture. It is the slow emergence of the "nothing" that comes to  
meaning in the elaboration of the "hole". In the sense of "Unfinished"  
it is the process in which the hole is created and produces an  
ever-increasing "nothing". The hole must never be finished. It must be  
dug deeper and deeper. It is like a recurring dream. I see an  
incredibly huge hole in which artists stand with shovels and  
wheelbarrows and transport away material to create something. Why we  
work physically in the age of machines is still unclear to me. I see  
the shape of the hole as a large parabola. Because only with a  
parabolic shape of a hole is it possible to continue digging and  
transport the material on spiral-shaped paths out of the hole without  
any aids or supporting formwork. The fact that there is an automatic  
focal point in a concave hole is a side effect. In this focal point  
the radiation of the universe can be bundled very easily and thus the  
past can be brought into the present. The "nothing" in the form of a  
hole, or the transition, becomes a time machine.
Another meta-level of an unfinished hole is the interpretation of  
terms. Something/nothing, inward/outward, life/death, etc. We live in  
fields with opposite terms. The fields are mostly very subjective and  
mean different things to different people. With "culture" we try to  
agree on the meaning of these terms. We look for common denominators.  
These terms become more and more objectified, which facilitates the  
communication between individuals. 1 and 0, the something and the  
nothing, are very objectified concepts. They are also the smallest  
unit of computer science. In order to enable machine information  
processing, however, as many terms as possible must be standardized.  
We are thus in a great upheaval of our culture resulting from the  
digital age. The progressive objectification of our everyday life  
counteracts the individual and subjective feelings of people.  
Unfortunately, there is very little interest in critically questioning  
this development. In the flood of information, personal, individual  
points of view no longer get through. Unfortunately, we as society as  
a whole do not ask ourselves whether we want this development at all.  
In STWST this leaves us with nothing else to do but to continue to  
shape the NOTHING, to dig and to hope that the hole will get bigger  
and bigger in order to have room for something new at some point.






Zitat von Shu Lea Cheang <shulea at earthlink.net>:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------


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