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FROM M TO MOr, How to Begin in the Midst of Things

Modulator—To whom should the invitation be addressed?Does Modulator have an address? No. Modulator is notthe name of a group of artists. Is Modulator the name of awork of art? Occasionally it performs that function. Andwhen it is not performing that function, what is it then?A number of variables for presenting exchange. But whoexchanges what? The number of participants is undeterminedbecause it includes a recipient who cannot be ordered about.One recipient? Well, perhaps there are several, and so thenumber of participants cannot be stated. It does happenthat an exhibition is visited by more than one person. Soare we talking about an exhibition as a presentation in artspace? Occasionally that is what the Modulator is, yes. Overthe long term, however, it is a format that is undergoing achange of format—from seminar to publication to exhibition,and so on. Your next question is perhaps Modulator as well.Because it could modulate the next answer? Who is direct-ing? The question-and-answer model. So, not modulator?We both have knowledge that the other has signaled a will-ingness to receive. We exchange, and in the process a thirdpotential is achieved. Modulator appears when neither ofus lays claim to possession or authorship of this potential. IsModulator something like a curator of knowledge? In orderto constitute it as a subject, one has to assume that thispotential can be represented by a subject. Yet it is potentialthat has no fixed support. A potential with a material sup-port is no longer a potential but rather capital. And thestage direction? Imagine this: While you ask me a question,you are listening to yourself. Whether you speak and listensimultaneously or one after the other, the Modulator appearswhen you can imagine playing both of these roles. Does themodulator program my thinking? It is no substitute for amoderator, an adviser, a teacher, or any other function forwhich we expect the person to have more knowledge than wedo. It generates the exchange of roles between me, you, themodel for discussion, the stage direction, and the material

sonal pronoun ‘I.’ Without question it goes back to thedesire to show what is inside through behavior, and that isthe moment in which one begins to write a undercover auto-biography” (Meyer, Von jetzt an werde ich mehrere sein). Thatbegins with a thing that is “by no means a multilayeredthing” but a thing that one “neither knows nor keeps.”“One doesn’t see it directly. One sees the perspective thatA has from B’s perspective which in turn sees C.” Once in awhile this is seen in this teaching of being several, this indi-rect perspective that interlocks apart perception in order toarrive at a subject that neither knows nor doesn’t know whatthe perspective is but that there is still a possibility beyondthe alternative knowing or not knowing: the possibility of a“saving as” that is not understood in terms of data manage-ment but rather self-reflexively highlights the activity of sav-ing as creative intervention into the future. Sometimes itappears under the name “similar third” sometimes as thedifference “between being on one’s own, not being on one’sown, and not thinking about it” (Meyer, Der Unterschied,der eine Umgebung schafft). Often it starts at three, as in Llull’scase. That may be a coincidence. Or the site where one be-gins when one has not saved one’s own memory of dualitythinking or can no longer call it up and, for this reason, isdependent on the coincidence and on sites where a coinci-dence is able, in fact, to occur. This is also the site where theauthor’s disappearance occurs by distributing herself acrossmultiple voices. “From now on I will be several. I will neveragain say of myself that I am this or I am that. From now onI am no longer the extension of a given state. I give expres-sion to the choice between two mutually exclusive possibi-lities between the state itself and the possibility transcendingit.” One gradually discovers that one has no identity “whenone is on the point of doing something.” > Live montage

Eran Schaerf, “Ähnlich, möglich, unbestimmt: Figuren der Kombination,” introduction to the seminar, HfbK Hamburg, 2004

NName—1. The false name. I desire something. Thathappens a lot. Sometimes I fulfill my desire. Sometimessomeone else fulfills it for me. In the bookstore I decided toapproach the salesman. I asked him for the book I wanted.He said it was not in stock. I was disappointed. But he saidhe could order it for me and have it the next day. I acceptedhis offer. I was pleased that I would get it so quickly. I gavehim the title and the author of the book. He found it inthe list of available titles and told me the price. He askedfor my name and address. “Benjamin Kirschbaum,” I said.Meanwhile the friend who was with me stood next to meleafing through a catalog and looking at me. I returned hiseye contact. We looked in each other’s eyes briefly until I hadto turn to the salesman again. I must have suddenly becomealien to my friend. Even more alien than the salesman wasto him. What kind of a situation have we gotten into here?No one asked. He didn’t ask me. He didn’t interrupt me.With his consent, which I could expect from him after our

of the dialogue. Is it then an authority? Certainly, but notlike one in a representative democracy where the represen-tatives are elected on the basis of certain content, becausecontent is undetermined and cannot therefore be represented.Rather than representing this or that or its authority,Modulator sets a process of mutual authorization in motion.In other words, can visitors no longer withdraw from thebusiness of understanding an artwork with the justificationthat they lack knowledge? In order to know that they lackknowledge, visitors must have an idea of this knowledge,otherwise how could they assume they lack it? Do you meanto say that our social institutions and especially educationalsystems are based on the idea of what someone lacks. I donot intend to say that; I just did say it. No, I said that.

Eran Schaerf, “Imaginäres Interview,” 2006

1 Jenni Zimmer, Modul (Module), ink on paper, 2005.2 Modulator (Mareike Bernein, Nadine Droste,

Gunnar Fleischer, Axel Gaertner, Oliver Gemballa, Un-uiJang, Heiko Karn, Jeong Hyun Kim, Alexander Mayer,Katrin Mayer, Nicole Messenlehner, Karolin Meunier,Stefan Moos, Miriam Pietrusky, Christoph Rothmeier,Eran Schaerf, Eske Schlüters, Jochen Schmith, RobertSchnackenburg, Mirjam Thomann, Sabin Tünschel,Gunnar Voss, Karsten Wiesel, Benjamin Yavuzsoy,Joachim Zahn, and Jenni Zimmer), View of installationof the exhibition Akademie: Kunst lernen und lehren,Kunstverein Hamburg, 2005.

Multiple—For Hegel “acting is simply transferring from astate not yet explicitly expressed to one fully expressed.”And “till he has made himself real by action,” “the individ-ual cannot know what he is.” Thus when the individualknows what he is he is a transferred individual. Can hetransfer himself back or re-transfer himself? Or does hehave to reverse his state of knowledge in return? And howis that to happen if not through the metaphorical deleting of files?Perhaps with the “undercover autobiography” of Eva Meyerin which a story of perception takes place “that casts doubton the adjective ‘real,’ on the verb ‘to be,’ and on the per-

exchange of glances and the trust that I sensed in it, I couldcontinue my order. At that moment I alone had to take re-sponsibility for us. The question what he must have felt asI did so occupied all my thoughts. It came unexpectedly—“What just happened?” was one question that came up.After I had given the salesman a deposit and the order wascomplete, I said goodbye to him, wished him a nice day andsaid that I would see him tomorrow. My friend had finishedleafing through his catalog and wanted to leave the book-store. It didn’t surprise me. It isn’t easy to endure having tomake someone wait. On the street he asked me why I gavea false name. Why had I lied? I gave in to my desire to offerthe salesman a closeness to the recent event, to the openingof the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, that I myself sought.I found a Jewish name by means of which I perhaps madehim think briefly, could thus perhaps give him a small pri-vate event after the large public event, without entering intoa personal conversation with him. A name that bore fruit,that I found pretty, as a way of saying thank you for hisproviding a service. In possession of my new name, I knewit would not last long. But perhaps it had contributed toestablishing direct contact between self and other, in orderto be able to feel responsibility for both. The improvisationI thought up was employed because the time and situationwere right for it. Perhaps it will be employed again. Withother means. With you, with me, with us. I don’t knowwhether the salesman thought of what I wanted to initiate.I couldn’t know it in advance. I didn’t know it while it washappening, and I still don’t know. It is impossible to know.I had the feeling when I left the store that I no longer hadanything to do with it. I didn’t want to get to know thesalesman. Something could be set in motion. The salesmancould tell the story to others. It all happened very quickly.The moment made it so urgent. It could not happen soquickly again. The friend who was with me asked whatbook I had ordered. “A different one that I had been think-ing of,” I said. The next day I picked up my book.

Benjamin Yavuszoy, “Der falsche Name,” in . . . als wären vier Wände um sie, Kombinator 4 (Hamburg: Materialverlag, 2006)

2. Not in My Name. Group exhibitions are often pre-sented in a way that the juxtaposition of works is notthought out. Either the respective positions are too sharplydemarcated from one another or they are subsumed undera common theme. [. . .] In Not in My Name both the spatialinterventions and the substantive positions taken by theartists are concerned with the possibilities and leeway avail-able in locating oneself in group exhibitions. In addition,they refer to the urban surroundings.

Press statement on Not in My Name, Ausstellungsraum KX, Hamburg, 2004, with Nadine Böll, Axel Gaertner, Heiko Karn,Katrin Mayer, Sandra Schäfer, Eske Schlüters, Jochen Schmith,Mirjam Thomann, and others

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3 Karolin Meunier, avoir un blanc II, 2004, video projection, view of installation of the exhibition Not in My Name,Ausstellungsraum KX, Hamburg, 2004.

Network—“The shapes of time are the prey we want to cap-ture,” wrote George Kubler in The Shape of Time, publishedin 1962. For him, the time of history was “too coarse andbrief to be an evenly granular duration such as the physicistssuppose for natural time [. . .]. A net of another mesh isrequired [. . .]. The notion of style has no more mesh thanwrapping paper or storage boxes. Biography cuts and shredsa frozen historic substance. [. . .] The monograph upon asingle work of art is like a shaped stone ready for positionin a masonry wall, but that wall itself is built without a pur-pose or plan.” (Kubler, The Shape of Time, 32–33) For Kublerevery important work of art can be seen as the solution to aproblem that has been carefully worked out. “Whether theevent was original or conventional, accidental or willed,awkward or skillful” (33) is irrelevant for him. “The im-portant clue is that any solution points to the existence ofsome problem to which there have been other solutions, andthat other solutions to this same problem will most likely beinvented to follow the one now in view” (33). The problem

context makes it possible to study the domination of the endproduct and its traditional forms and to explore alternatives.We called the room AvAv—referring to Averhoffstrasse, thestreet on which the building is located, but repeated, inallusion to the fact that it is a space within a space.

Eran Schaerf, “Rollenspiel: Für eine Methode des Unvorhersehbaren,”Texte zur Kunst, no. 53 (2004)

4 Axel Gaertner, coming apart space, 2003. Suspended sheet of Rigips, projection: Coming Apart, Milton MosesGinsberg, 1969, 110 min., b/w, loop, view of installationin the AvAv, Hamburg, 2003.

5 Still from Coming Apart.6 Heiko Karn, Latent Utopias, 2003 drywall construction,

wall paint, view of installation in the AvAv, Hamburg,2003.

7 Robert Schnackenburg, Probestreifen (Test strips), 2003, propaganda paintings, lectern, projection screen, set oflamps, ashtray with remains of a Gewehr 98 rifle.Installation and backdrop in the AvAv, Hamburg, 2003.

SSearching—1. The image. And the power of the imaginary is immediate—direct: I do not search for the image; it leapsabruptly into my eye. Only later do I reflect on it and in-cessantly cause the good and the bad sign to alternate.Anyone who wishes to know the truth receives strong andvivid images in reply, but they become ambiguous, equivocalas soon as one tries to transform them into signs: as in themantic arts, the lover search for counsel has to piece togetherthe truth for himself.

Eske Schlüters, Sehen als Denken Sehen (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver, 2006)

2. Searching and re-presenting. The process ofappropriating images—even under the aspect of desire thatis constitutive of identity—is something I would like toaddress, reflect on, and illustrate in Shaking the Lines on theMirror of Time. Our present opportunities for access to in-finitely many images—via the Internet, for example—permita subjective selection of images by which we can constructactively or even unconsciously an image of ourselves andour society. [. . .] For this work I have chosen a place whose

changes to the extent that the solutions accumulate. “Thechain of solutions nevertheless discloses the problem” (33).He describes the problem that can be deduced from asequence of artifacts as their intellectual form, the chain ofsolutions as their category of being. The chain of solutionsestablishes the boundaries of a sequence. “When problemscease to command active attention as deserving of newsolutions, the sequence of solutions is stable during theperiod of inaction. But any past problem is capable of reacti-vation under new conditions” (35), reopening the sequence.

Eran Schaerf, “Ähnlich, möglich, unbestimmt: Figuren der Kombination,” introduction to the seminar, Hochschule für bildendeKünste (hereafter HfbK) Hamburg, 2004

RRehearsal—1. Rehearsal space. An art college is an in-stitutional framework that regulates the action of learning/teaching by a set of preestablished roles, functions, andformats: teachers and students, the period of study, and thecareer that begins thereafter, the university context, and the“larger” public, production, presentation, practice, andtheory, to name just a few. This set is based on the concep-tions of society, finds expression in architectonic measures,and is codified in law. Accordingly, the rooms available forteaching are assigned functions: a classroom in which thestudents work; a private room for the professor (that in themaster-student model was the professor’s studio) to which heor she can withdraw or have discussions about work [. . .].Calling this set of roles a set of roles means taking it as a stagedirection, and thus touching on the freedom of the actorsto take responsibility for their interpretation of their roles.In practice—for example, in the seminar on combinatorialanalysis that I offer at the HfbK Hamburg—it looks like this:The seminar takes place in a room that was constructedinside my “private space.” Its function is determined anewby the use the students put it to: seminar room, exhibitionspace, rehearsal space. Whether a work is presented or adiscussion organized, studying here means, first of all, re-maining open, whether the discussion or the presentedwork, the two together, or the relationship between themconstitutes the artistic practice. The indeterminacy of the

location—outside of the building yet inside the school build-ing—that will be paradigmatic for its site-specific performance:the outside wall of the pavilion and its opposite side in thepavilion. [. . .] I chose scenarios whose lines of connectionsmeet along the boundaries and also have boundaries as atheme. It is about characterizing an outside, a rebellion andrejection of existing power relations [. . .] the shooting actionsof Niki de Saint Phalle (1961–64), which mark the beginningof her artistic work and a rejection of the male dominatedtradition of painting [. . .], another case of a substitute forviolence is happening now in a poor suburb of Los Angeles.In South Central young people go out into the street todance and have dance “battles” rather than joining aggres-sive gangs and dealing drugs [. . .]. Stripes represent anotherdesign element in this project. In the history of the Weststripes have stood for, among others things, exclusion,marginalization and marking, [. . .] fools, artists, criminals,prostitutes, the devil. > Fig. 37

Katrin Mayer, Research material for Shaking the Lines on the Mirror of Time and excerpts from the theoretical outline for her thesis in thefine arts, HfbK Hamburg, 2006

8 Lieutenant commander Norman Wilkinson of the Royal Navy, formerly a marine artist, designer, illustrator,formed the “dazzle section” in 1917 to design paint schemesfor ship camouflage. In this photograph Wilkinson isholding up a dazzle-painted ship against one of his marinepaintings, 1970.

9 Ship painted in dazzle scheme in the First World War.

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10 Adolf Loos, Josephine Baker house, Paris. Model, circa 1927.

11 Prostitute in the Middle Ages wearing stripes as an obligatory identifying feature. Mural by a student ofGiotto, circa 1340, Bolzano, San Domenico.

12 Daddy wig: Niki de Saint Phalle in her film Daddy,1972.13 William Klein, Op Art still from the film Qui êtes-vous

Polly Maggoo?, designed by William Klein, 1966.

ture correspond, depending on the context, to certain codesand can thus be appropriated; in the process they becomehandy and materially available. Moreover, gestures andcodes that are appropriated on site turn up in other stages—for example, in videos—and are in turn understood asadopting a role. The character can be understood as a stage.The character thus makes the possibilities of a role availableand comes into being in its form as a stage because certaincoordinates function as an image. These coordinates can befacades, interiors, or clothing. The stage can also be read asa multiple character, which leads us in turn to a dividedauthorship. Divided authorship, which functions here as anensemble, adopts the roles that the “function of the character”makes available. What are we to make of the fact that acharacter can represent a stage? What is up with the idea ofa platform? Or is there perhaps another word than “stage,”because that word refers too directly to the theater or thelike? The stage can also be understood as a space of events,as a place at which a person or a subject is influenced bybackdrops in vastly different ways (backdrops in the formof consumption-oriented accompanying inventory, of sym-

Stage—1. The edge of the stage. Place the island. Twoguests are on an island. All of the others are workers; theyare there to serve the guests. They, the two guests, sleep ina tent. The others in a log cabin (the superiors) or in aQuonset hut (the employees). At the edge of the stage arepiles of trash that every night are incinerated “in secret.” Atnight runs a generator standing in the middle of the camp.In the middle of the stage stands the generator that runs atnight and provides energy for light. Whenever the light isburning, the people speaking can hardly be understood.They have to scream their dialogue at those listening. Atnight rats run around; they are looking for food. The ratsaren’t supposed to be called rats, because they insist onhaving a name. “Otherwise they get mad and the gods dotoo,” says a boss. In daylight a tent is seen between palmtrees, with blue water and white sand in front of it. A horizonis also visible. The edge of the stage is a white line, labeledhorizon. The horizon is redrawn by the employees now andagain. Two people are speaking, sitting in front of the tent.Workers go by. It is morning.

Sabin Tünschel, “Im Übergang zur Einteilung,” in “Transitökonomia,”theoretical thesis in visual communications/media, HfbK, Hamburg,2005

14 15Sabin Tünschel, Stills from Ort die Insel (Place the island), 2005, video, 35 min.

2. The character as stage. The possibility exists topresent credibility by adopting a certain role. By referring tothe use of the character that results from adopting a role, thecharacter is appropriated for certain moments and projects.This appropriating points to media trends in general andhow one can work with them. From the perspective of ap-propriation, it is possible for the figure to make use of fieldswith various codes that, among other things, probe and ex-plore approaches and expectations. A suit or a certain ges-

bolic images of lifestyle-influenced work worlds, hence astage set as well). An inversion of the spatial is taking placehere. Not a subject or an abstraction goes on stage; rather,the stage moves to the subject or through the subject. Theplace casts back the role, helping to define it. The questionis which places are interesting under these aspects. Theyare places where there are limitations on access or that areconnected to the working world: annual meetings of corpo-rations and trade fairs, for example, but also perhaps placesfor recreation, like adventure worlds and theme parks.In Video Specific Setting there is a still photograph of ahistoric-looking space that is entered by an employee. Shemoves slowly past the tables and checks how the places areset. From time to time she makes minor adjustments.Maintaining an accurate staging produces a spatial identitythat is reflected in the controlled movements and actionsof the employee. The production of the video work waspreceded by extensive research in restaurants in Moscow.There since the fall of communism spaces are increasinglydesigned thematically (theme restaurants). Often the themesare based on historical models. Restaurant visitors aresometimes participants and sometimes coproducers of thesestaged surroundings. In some restaurants it is possible totake part in performances between courses. > Continuity

Jochen Schmith, Gespräche mit Jochen Schmith 0–5, Kombinator 6 (Hamburg: Materialverlag, 2006); press release for Jochen Schmith’sexhibition in the Hedah, Maastricht, 2006

16 17Jochen Schmith, Stills from Specific Setting, 2006, video, 6 min. 35 sec.

Storage—1. Social storage system. Combing storedimages for a speech, something orators did before there werebooks, resembles the way artists work with information:both speak with images that already exist. By “information”I mean the broad palette from the material by way of theobject to the word—everything that finds a place in theworld and is stored so that it can be called up again some-day and called a “ready-made,” a found object,” or a “foundscene.” As helpful as these terms from the jargon of art were

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and still are in shifting the artist’s creative act from depictingand producing to finding, appropriating, and quoting, theystill serve a demand for the authentic by distinguishingthemselves from it. Combination as an activity for producingconnections, however, shifts the focus from the authenticobject to the combination, which always points to the possi-bility of being put together some other way. Hence a combi-nation is always one of many, and because of this conditionof plurality its statement is always in a process of negotiationwith its possible variants. The term “information,” whichincludes various media like object, word, and so on, tries todo justice to two different circumstances: in combining we arenot in nature but in a social storage system that we accessfor images stored by ourselves or by others. These imagesare for their part already combinations—just as a sentence ismade up of individual words. They can be broken downagain into partial information—a process that quickly leadsinto the social context of the information in question andmakes the communal properties of an image evident. Thecombinatorial potential lies in recognizing the “found” im-age as a “combined” one in order to see the sequence inwhich the visual information was assembled or to be able toconsider the consequences of another sequence.In his book on contemplation Ramon Llull personifies thepowers of the soul: intellect, will, and memory in an allegory(as “three noble, beautiful virgins standing on a highmountain”—is this personification intended to consolidatethe combined image as a socially anchored visual process?)whose activities he associates as follows: “The first re-members what the second understands and the third wants;the second understands what the first remembers and thethird wants; the third wants what the first remembers andthe second understands.” The three phrases are combinedinto three sentences in different order. What difference does

ambiguous. Barthes did not really see the eyes of theemperor’s brother; he saw a photograph. The print [. . .] isa reference to a photographic situation that took place andin that sense an “emanation of past reality,” as Barthes puts it.

Stefan Moos, “später: Einzelfoto und Serie,” theoretical thesis for studies in visual communication and media, HfbK Hamburg, 2004

Summer—1. It is always summer. You are on a meadow,trees in front, in the background fog. A house. A woman iscoming toward you out of the house. The woman is wearinga gray jacket, dark gray pants. She is coming directly atyou. Turns off, past you. Past a bush. She cries. Walk behindthe woman. The woman goes down a steep slope. Don’t beafraid, you won’t fall. The woman stops. Remain standingsome distance from the woman. Watch her. If you decide togo to the woman, then press three. If you decide to go tothe woman, press three and console her. You have decidednot to go to the woman. Cut. > Live montage

Mareike Bernien and Charlotte Pfeifer, Es ist immer Sommer (It isalways summer), audio, 10 min. 21 sec., in voyohr, Kombinator 2(Hamburg: Materialverlag, 2006)

2. A summer day. a belt the width of a mobile phonemade of dederon polyester stretches diagonally across myupper body. i pull another one over my right shoulder. thebicycle, the street. under a roof i put a u-lock through therigid mesh of a fence and around the frame of the bike. theseat is my stirrup over the fence. jump. lawn.in the near distance, the murmuring of a group of people.sure of my idea, i go up to them. shouted from the side, whythe fence became my entrance. probably the cashier, in theform of a cheerful lady who calls to me and in my responseto my announcement of my profession, a tripod on myshoulder seems to testify to my professionalism or credibili-ty, i ask . . . unexpectedly she lets go, without crossing thegate, with a reference to the next time [. . .]. i always swimnow with my new technique, breathing in above water andbreathing out underwater . . . , so there were two womentalking, whenever i surfaced i heard a few snatches of con-versation and then i went back under again, then i surfacedagain and heard more of the sentence and then underagain, their voices became quieter, then i swam back andthen they got louder, and i kept hearing about a second’sworth of conversation from them, that was a pretty coolacoustic situation. a cool acoustic situation. a cool acousticsituation, i am probably totally crooked in the picture.

Gunnar Fleischer, Freibad, radio play, 10 min. 23 sec., in voyohr, Kombinator 2 (Hamburg: Materialverlag, 2006)

AAddressee—1. Judgment of the reader. If it is the casethat I construct the image of a reader in the course of writing,the addressee, simply by virtue of having been addressed,derives in return the right to announce a judgment in the

it make if “the first” comes first, second, or third in thesentence? Depending on the order of the elements—andeven before that with the order of the places, depending inwhich place which thing is said—a story can turn out thisway or that. Chronology is an order that is as useful as it ishierarchical in order to present a certain course of events as“true” or “correct” or “following the natural sequence oftime.” What concerns us here is less “how it was” than howit could be or how it could possibly be again, this way orthat. How can an event be considered without ignoringhistorical connections and without subjecting oneself tothem? How does possibility effect the past and become apotential for changing position in time? And what are con-sequences of this for the idea of sequence or conclusion?


2. “That has been.” Two images, each of which showsa political assassination or attempted assassination. Thephotograph shows William J. Gaynor, the mayor of NewYork, in 1910 boarding a ship in which he planned to travelto Europe. The photographer (William F. Warnecke), whohad come to photograph the departure, pressed the shutterrelease just after the marksman had hit Gaynor in the throat.Gaynor survived the assassination attempt but died threeyears later from its lingering effects. The second image showsthe murder of President Lincoln in the Ford Theater inWashington in 1865 (artist unknown). In the first example,the photograph is probably more famous than the assassina-tion attempt it depicts; the second is one of many illustrationsof a famous event. [. . .] But if both of the circumstancesshown are similar and both long ago, how is it that thephotograph has so much more presence? Or what consti-tutes the special presence of a photograph? In general,greater documentary character is attributed to photographsthan to drawings. But this too should be questioned. [. . .]The Gaynor photograph is one of the great moments ofdocumentary photography: “in the right place at the righttime,” which sounds particularly cynical with respect to thisscene. Yet the question remains: what exactly makes thephotograph seem so close to reality? Roland Barthes de-scribes for himself and his readers over the course ofCamera lucida what is special about photography for him.Observing photographs that touch him, both private andnot private, he reveals the noeme, the inner idea and make-up of photography. For him it lies in the phrase “that hasbeen.” This phrase is the dominant message of every photo-graph, for Barthes it is at once the horror, the scandal, andthe source of enthusiastic fascination. Looking at a photo-graph of Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother he says: “I amlooking at eyes that looked at the Emperor.” Barthes thuscalls photography “magic.” The fascination comes, especiallyin the case of historical photographs, from the fact thatphotographs as objects “transport” a motif, an isolatedmoment through time. Nevertheless, the “that-has-been” is

future. This does not, however, imply a simple relationshipof dependence vis-à-vis the reader of the writer’s pages: inthe moment when an author communicates to another, heplaces himself in a situation where he will be judged. In orderto be able to react to this always conflicting relationship tothe addressee, the latter’s possible expectation is anticipatedintellectually, so that the communication is a reply to some-thing that was never said. When the sender forms an ideaof the reader’s attitude, he begins, conversely, to expectsomething from him. Hence the judgment of the reader isalso a statement that is judged and for which he is responsible.The reader is not the second but just as much the first. Bothpositions—the provisional judgment of the reader and hisimage in the imagination of the writer—repeatedly become amutual occasion to reformulate what already exists. Even theprejudgment is a text, and an openness is certain inscribedin it, to the extent that it is acknowledged provisionally.

Karolin Meunier, Der Entwurf des Adressaten, Kombinator 5 (Hamburg: Materialverlag, 2006)

2. Production of the reader. In the reception of publicspace, however, the crucial role is played not so much bythe meaning of individual signs as by their use—for exam-ple, if a name is placed in relation to something and possiblereadings result. The consumer thus makes the things per-ceived his own. Every form of this appropriate constructsand deconstructs the received, separating a name from itspredetermined inscription. The role of the consumer is thusnot that of a copyist but of an active designer. Michel deCerteau describes this role in connection with reading abook: “If then ‘the book is a result (a construction) pro-duced by the reader,’ one must consider the operation of thelatter as a sort of lectio, the production proper to the ‘reader’(‘lecteur’). The reader neither takes the position of the authornor an author’s position. He invents in texts somethingdifferent from what they ‘intended.’ He detaches them fromtheir [. . .] origin.” (de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life).In this context de Certeau distinguishes between thestrategies of companies and institutions that would like to

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produce and control social perception and behavior norma-tively and the tactics of users, who appropriate both con-sumer goods and their signs by dealing with them in un-predictable ways. In that sense, consuming is not a passiveallowing something to happen but a form of practice. Ifwe accept Certeau’s concept, it is reasonable to assume thatsubversive factors are already inherent in the very processof appropriation. This critical potential can, however,be emphasized only by presuming a clear oppositionalseparation of hegemonic strategies and subversive tactics. > Rehearsal

Heiko Karn, Replay, theoretical outline for his thesis in the fine arts, HfbK, Hamburg, 2006

20 Heiko Karn, Replay, Plexiglas, metal fittings, 2006.21 Robert Schnackenburg, o.T. (Ein Brief) (Untitled

[A letter]), 2003, C print.

BBorder—1. Borders of architectural space. In conven-tional cartography borders are represented as lines thatdelimit one territory from another and encompass politicalspheres of influence. If at the time of the cold war, of social-ist and communist forms of government, borders were gen-erally thought of as confining the population living withintheir boundaries, then in the globalized world order bordersfrequently expanded into vast areas and zones that primarilyserve to provide protection (against migrants and intruders).The structure of borders appears in this context to be less aphysical fact than to be constituted in actu. A constant taskof filtering, of exclusion and confinement, of permeabilityand impermeability leave their mark on the border space.In her writing on this, the cultural theorist Eva Horn saysthat borders have the potential to dissolve, that is, to be-come immaterial and “turn inward into the space they sur-round” (Horn, Über Grenzen). Accordingly borders can beunderstood as zones of parallel movements that overlap oneanother and that re-form themselves over and over again.Thus a strengthening of state borders is not achievedthrough military presence alone. In fact, control is not visiblyexercised in a strategic “destruction through design”—thatis, through a reorganization of infrastructural networks incertain areas. The dissolution of linear border situations in

While the “incorrectness” of the jump cut comes aboutthrough the uncertainty of perception with regard to a timenot represented in continuum and a movement that doesnot seem flowing, the avoidance of the continuity error is toprevent one from being able, or having, to think somethingadditional, something that lies outside of the frame. For in-stance, like a glass, that was still seen in one shot and whichdisappeared in a subsequent one; or how it happens that inCasablanca Humphrey Bogart drops a wine glass and thenpicks up a whiskey glass in the shot that immediately follows.In terms of a congruent story line, sequences edited in thisway certainly appear to be mistakes. But perhaps onlybecause it is so astonishing how confusing such a small“inconsistency” in a supposedly so insignificant momentcan seem to us, and how it is thus capable of bringing usfrom impassive seeing via a dulled sense to thinking.

Eske Schlüters, “Das narrative dazwischen” (The narrative in between), in Erzähltes erzählen, Kombinator 3 (Hamburg: Material-verlag, 2006)

CContinuity—1. Thematic and nonthematic continuity. Thesimilarity in activity of producer and recipient refers to aconcept of continuity in production. At different times bothare involved in the production of a sequence that has emanat-ed from “the work.” Through the importance that we attachto the respective time, we judge it to be either constitutingor interrupting continuity. But isn’t continuity perceived firstand foremost through events that represent interruptions init? In his account of the study of iconography George Kublerproblematizes iconology as a field whose principle sub-stance is the continuity of theme: “the breaks and rupturesof the tradition lie beyond the iconologist’s scope” (Kubler,The Shape of Time). That which breaks with the continuity oftheme is not taken up as an event within it. Kubler criticizesthis process of inclusion and exclusion in the service of the

favor of overlapping, permanently re-forming parallel sitesmeans a state of collision that, according to the architectPhilipp Misselwitz, in its informality also carries within itselfthe potential for a unpredictable and incalculable develop-ment. What direct, indirect, or imagined exchange takesplace in a border zone? Such a question hides the attempt tonot connote the concept of collision in negative terms butrather to see in it the potential of a third, common space fornegotiation that is also shaped via possibilities of violatingand transgressing the border. Transitional situations andborder zones would accordingly be a site in which overlap-ping parallel movements are positioned against a hermeti-cism, that is, against an isolation and the claim of an inte-grality. The open in-betweenness turns into a possibility forunpredictable patterns of exchange—the concept of insideand outside dissolves in favor of an in-between.

22 Mirjam Thomann, Open Revolving, roofing lath, fiberboard, wall paint, 2005, view of installation of the exhibitionNot in My Name, Ausstellungsraum KX, Hamburg,2004 > Name 2

Open Revolving was a revolving door in the entry/exit areaof the gallery through which visitors accessed the exhibition.Entrance into the gallery was delayed, as if by a hurdle,and the smooth procession from one space into the otherwas interrupted. The “object in between,” in motion, thuspointed, via formal markings, to the intertwining of the twospaces. Repeating graphic elements were carried from out-side to the inside and from inside to the outside. I was thusinterested in the transitional area between two spaces as aninterval that is shaped by the properties of both adjoiningspaces and whose essential feature is the mix of the two. > Curtain 3

Mirjam Thomann, Shift (In Between), theoretical outline for her thesis in the fine arts, HfbK Hamburg, 2006

23 Mirjam Thomann, Shift (In Between), partition walls of the Hochschule, particle board, fiberboard, mirror, enamelpaint, poster, 2006.

2. Jump cut. Even though in film terminology jump cut,crossing the line, and continuity error are spoken of as“violations of the rules,” and although a light-dark differenceof takes or a switch from an extreme close-up to a total vieware perceived as confusing, one cannot really speak here ofimpossible or senseless linking of images. For these thingsalso have an effect. For example, the avoidance of crossingthe line has the function, first and foremost, of enabling theclear identification of the characters in the film in spacethrough their positions and lines of vision. If it is not firstand foremost this function that matters, but rather thatwhich is said, in the broader sense, and not who says it, orrather precisely that utterances are not clearly assigned toone character, as in situations of free indirect speech, thencrossing the line cannot merely be considered an error.

establishment of a time structure for writing history andthus directs the reader’s attention to the intermittent classes,which are themselves interrupted and which interrupt otherclasses: “those which lapse inside the same cultural grouping,and those which span different cultures.” “The history oftranscultural diffusion in turn contains several kinds ofmotion.” From the “wholesale destruction of the nativeAmerican civilizations”, from which only that survived thatwas new and necessary for the conquerors “(potatoes,tomatoes, chocolate, etc.)” to the “continuation” of thisculture via foreign artists who “enlarged many native themesin their own terms.” Among other examples Kubler bringsin that of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright who “renewedan experimentation with Maya corbel-vaulted compositionsthat had lapsed since the fifteenth century in Yucatan [. . .]These twentieth-century continuations of the unfinishedclasses of fifteenth-century American Indian art can be in-terpreted as an inverted colonial action by stone-age peopleupon modern industrial nations at a great chronologicaldistance.” In “Feeling Global” Heike Behrend describes theproductions of the Likoni Ferry Photographers as “a uniquelocal development that makes use of a great variety ofimages from the outside world.” In the decor of their studiosthe photographers realize “the vision of a cosmopolitanmodernism (or postmodernism) that has freed itself fromthe logic of a fixed place and does away with the divisionof exile and home in favor of a global discourse. (The photo-graphers are African migrants and their customers are alsoAfrican migrants, guest workers, and tourists)” (Behrend,“Imaginäre Reisen”). And yet it is not just the signs of theapparatus of western progress, such as the luxury cruiseship or passenger airliner, that are found in the decorations,but also “a counter-image to the modern urban landscape,”images that fall back upon the hunting tradition, though in“its newer, cheaper variant”: as “touristic safaris into thelarge animal parks that are organized less for the purpose ofshooting wild animals but more as opportunities to photo-graph them.” “Here we have an innovation, a discontinuityproduced a posteriori out of the local consumption of globalelements.” If the depiction of an airplane in this context canbe described as appropriation, then a reappropriation is putforward with the depiction of the hunting scene as safari—areappropriation of that which counts as belonging to Africanculture, and is hard to distinguish from the touristic form ofthe “safari” shaped by western colonial policy. In the studiothe hunting scene takes place on a screen. The studio, whichas setting already invokes image production, turns into aspatial medium for the image of the two-dimensional piece ofinformation “hunting scene.” The concept of appropriation,the “taking possession of the unclaimed” or of “the other”is given a varied role here as the “other” contains the “self.”Can a hunting scene only be depicted in combination withtourism? Does one necessarily also invoke the T-shirt indus-try when invoking Che Guevara’s portrait? It is not onlythirty-seven years that separates Kulber’s The Shape of Time22

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and Behrend’s Feeling Global but also a complex shiftingwith roles “inverted” that on no account takes place only inlanguage, even if it makes itself felt in language by bringingus to its border. Whether or not the clear demarcation ofthe categories “other” and “self” was ever more than anillusion—globalization, at any rate, suggests its abolition. Fora practice of the inverted roles that interlocks the other andthe self concepts like colonization and appropriation don’tappear to be sufficient. Globalization conceals the complexityof this practice when it maintains that the other and the selfhave merged, that there is nothing to appropriate, nothingto colonize, but also no difference and thus no longer anyreason to engage one another. This idea of a single culturecharacterizes the concept of continuity shaped by globaliza-tion as secure from such interruptions like those caused bythe Likoni Ferry Photographers. For the duration of apicture they abandon, however, the “the logic of the fixedplace” by bringing into the picture the migration history ofmotifs—and perhaps also their own longed-for migration—between cultures and mediums. And in this way they havearrived at the logic of a plurality of places and thus in thecombinatorics of interruptions and continuations and inter-ruptions as continuations. > Addressee > Fig. 24


2. The logic of a plurality of places. The installationHeights of Success works with the existing light sources in theGalerie der HfbK as a system of reference to other places/galleries. On the basis of different measurements of theheights of lights from New York galleries on Twenty-fourthStreet the height of the lights in the Galerie der HfbK waschanged. A row was left at the original height and functionedas a reference height. Invitation cards to the current exhibi-tions of the respective galleries were fastened under theirrespective rows of lights. The cards—in the form of standardlabels for works found in museums—contained additionalinformation noted down by hand on the heights of the lightsin the respective gallery. > Memory (art of)

historicizing of events. There is no need for conversation. Acritical discourse is not (or no longer) necessary.

Mareike Bernien and Kerstin Schroedinger, Press release for Wandbild(Mural), 2006

27 Mareike Bernien and Kerstin Schroedinger, Wandbild,2006, acrylic paint on white wall, annual exhibition at theHfbK Hamburg, 2006, view of installation

28 Mareike Bernien and Kerstin Schroedinger, Wandbild, 2006, text panels

24 Jochen Schmith, Heights of Success, invitation card from the Stellan Holm Gallery with handwritten notations, 2005

25 Jochen Schmith, Heights of Success, adjustment of the heights of lights, invitation cards with handwrittennotations. View of installation of the exhibition Post-Double-Super-High-Opening, Galerie der HfbK Hamburg,2005. On the wall, Katrin Mayer, Brand New, A0-sizeposters; right: Mirjam Thomann, Open Revolving. > Searching 2, > Border

Curtain—1. Layer. In autumn 2005 renovation work in abasement corridor of the Hochschule für bildende KünsteHamburg uncovered a mural that depicted two Wehrmachtsoldiers. Apart from certain details that were carefully un-covered—faces, hands, ammunition belts, rifle butts—themural was left in a raw state. A note by the school’s arthistorian next to the finding, which was later published inthe HfbK newsletter, attempted to place the work in a his-torical context and at the same time point out its lack ofartistic merit. It also noted “that it is not, as first suspected,a continuous frieze of soldiers but rather a single depiction.”The state of the mural has not been altered since.

26 Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, View of the corridor

After observing the internal structures of the college andabove all the nonreaction to events—the uncovering, for ex-ample—we moved the mural two floors higher, in a slightlydifferent place, in order to show it again. We retained onlythe structure of the efforts at restoration that had beenmade, with their various layers. Nothing more was ex-posed; rather, a new layer was applied with glossy acrylicpaint. When viewed, the uncovering and the overpaintingcoincide, which inverts the process of restoration and thuspreserves the structure. Two text panels were placed besidethe work that refer to the note on the mural. The work at-tempts to allude to a way of approaching history in post-postwar Germany. In the latter everything is already visibleand interruptions (like, for example, such a find) themselvesbecome part of the continuous structure and confirm the

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Wandbild (Mural), 2006310 x 330 cm, acrylic paint on white wall

The discovery or uncovering of a structure coin-cides with its overpainting. The application of an-other layer restores the originally intended state. Itconserves that which made the obvious visible bymeans of the uncovering, so that the painting wascompleted. For the moment we can only speculateabout its origins and function. The possibility thatit represents a student work (exercise) from thecourse on restoration/murals has not been ruled out.

Wandbild (Mural), 2006310 x 330 cm, acrylic paint on white wall

During restoration work at the Hochschule fürbildende Künste a mural of two GermanWehrmacht soldiers was recently overpainted. It isa painting with a continuous structure to which anew, glossy layer was applied. For the moment wecan only speculate about its origins and function.The possibility that it represents a student work(exercise) from the course on restoration/muralshas not been ruled out. It is clearly evident fromdifferences in the manner of execution that thepainting was never completed. In order to clarifyopen questions the decision about how to handleit was postponed.

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2. Behind the curtain.

29 Karolin Meunier, “Open Source / Open Letter no. 01,” sent with the invitation to the exhibition Post-Double-Super-High-Opening, Galerie der HfbK Hamburg, 2005. Otherartists in the exhibition: Heiko Karn, Katrin Mayer,Jochen Schmith, and Mirjam Thomann.

3. In the adjoining room. Noise: the clattering of atypewriter. Two peals from a distant church bell. A. laugh-ing—rustling of paper. M. puts coat on. A. giggles, very sub-dued. M. departs with the sound of steps. A. calling afterhim—sighs. Brief pause. Then door opens. Chairman, un-pleasant organ sounds—A. closes the window. Laughs, verysubdued. Telephone rings. A. lifts the receiver—to the chair-

That is not only true of television. Every act of publicationis done with an awareness that the public—as blurry as itsboundaries may be—causes the work to enter into a time ofunspecified duration. During this time the work is availableto the social system; it is stored, received, opened to an un-specified reading from which it will emerge as a combinationof facts, fictions, interpretations, and analyses. Although thereception of a work differs in its means from its production,seen combinatorially reception is just as much an activity inwhich what the artist produced is produced repeatedly orcombined with other information. The reception of a trans-mission can be described as its postproduction. Whether ornot a work is a work before it appears in the social storagesystem, once it has been exhibited it is always in the societyof reception. Any concept of reception that attributes onlya receptive role to the recipient underestimates the (produc-tion) share of the recipient in continuing the work and pro-ducing a sequence that will be available to other recipients.Even if the producer and recipient are active in differentphases of the same process, it does not mean that both areproducing the same thing. In all probability during his activi-ty the recipient produces a work of art different from thework that the artist produced. Both cases represent varia-tions. Efforts to define one variation as original and theother as interpretation or cover version are measures toassign the variations to this or that value system in order tomake them suitable for economic objectives or for purposesof writing history. The value of the variation in musicshows how much such efforts are specific to the art world.When we are active mnemotechnically, we have abandonednot only the omnipresent site of our own memory but alsothe claim to sole authorship of this or that variation. We areno longer limited to this or that attribution of a role drawnby the line of production-interpretation, even if we enteredinto the production process at different times. We take inter-pretation as a translation from one medium to another. Wecontinue that which we ourselves or others have stored forus or not for us and thereby make the resulting combinationavailable to us and others, who will produce in turn theirown combination. This process can last millennia or just afew minutes. In the process not only works of art take formbut time itself.


Narrate—1. Narrating the narrated. Meaning is dif-ferential, I heard that in a course in at the college. Love is aform of knowledge, I copied it out of my notebook. I cant’tremember where I found it. To know you can die is to bedead already, I read that in a book somewhere. Why do youthink knowing’s going to make a difference? I’ve thoughtthat all my life. Well, you’re wrong. Knowing doesn’t meanshit. It doesn’t mean shit. I like you, especially when youdon’t seem to know everything.

man—Into the telephone—Laughs. Puts down the receiver.Steps departing. Door opens, steps coming closer. [. . .]

Gunnar Voss, Im Nebenzimmer (In the adjoining room), stage directions (taken from the radio play Ein Geschäft mit Träumen byIngeborg Bachmann)

30 31 32Gunnar Voss, Im Nebenzimmer, exhibition in the Trottoir,Hamburg 2006; the Trottoir is an exhibition space witha display window. A partition separates the room into adisplay window area in front, in which exhibitions areregularly shown that can be seen day and night, and aback area used for events. The curtain hangs outsideabout a meter in front of the exhibition space. Inside theexhibition space the partition wall is tipped over and canbe walked on as a floor and stage. The stage directionsare projected onto the wall in a varied rhythm. > Stage > Border

IIntervention—Into time. Storage does not just mean collectingdata. We collect data with the idea that we can perhaps useit again at a later point. So we begin to intervene in the timethat is still pending. Storage is also sending. To our selves,who will open the file someday, or to someone else who isnot specified at first but clearly we are counting on him,otherwise we would not preserve the transmission in thefirst place. “Every transmission,” Luhmann writes in DieRealität der Massenmedien, “promises another transmission.”

33 Eske Schlüters, Sehen als Denken Sehen (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver, 2006).

34 Nicole Messenlehner, Die Worte sind nicht Lüge, sie sprechen eine bedingte Möglichkeit von Wahrheit und Realität (Words arenot lies; they speak a conditional possibility of truth andreality), 2006, detail.

2. Fictitious narration. My memory writes a fictitiousnarration of the life of another. Or of many others. Wordsare not lies; they speak a conditional possibility of truth andreality. In my artistic work I try to translate built space as aconcept of reality. By making the inner world visible thespace thus created appears in connection with the outerworld constituted through the space. The invisible “innerworld,” “counter-world” organizes an outer world in thefirst place (Baier, Raum. Prolegomena zu einer Architektur desgelebten Raumes). The inner world is subjective, it determinesthe personal concept of reality. An example: Alice in Wonder-land turns her inner world (as image) outward and therebytranslates a concept of reality into her world of experienceor into her life. I employ written and spoken language as ameans to represent the inner world or inner reality, whichin turn generates an image. Language has an opportunityhere to create and define a space. This is why one can, asDerrida says, live inside the text, if thinking prepares a way,a way opens a text, and architecture writes a building (Meyer,Architexturen). Spoken language, however, monopolizes a dif-ferent space for itself than written language. Seeing/readingis active while spoken language has to be waited for.

I. Woman: We will go from each other wordlessly. As at thebeginning when our words were foreign and strange. Thewords are not lies, they speak a conditional possibility oftruth and reality.

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II. Man: There is loathing between us. Between you andme. Woman: And a stillness, statue-like, only not fromhappiness. Man: And it will remain and endure. Woman:We will go from each other wordlessly.

III. Woman: If minutes later I had demanded the scarf backthat I gave him . . . If the disappointment had been nippedin the early stages. Man: Why did I offer her my hand andwhy did she take it.

As the entrance to the work is also the exit, that is, a spatialdead end, the spectator is shown the way. The possibility tomove freely in the space is not given. Basically, a circularmovement is to be performed even if not in the convention-al geometric sense. A circular movement always leads to thebeginning thereby repeating the story, which begins anewwithout resolution.

Nicole Messenlehner, Die Worte sind nicht Lüge, sie sprechen eine bedingte Möglichkeit von Wahrheit und Realität (Words are not lies; they speak aconditional possibility of truth and reality), manuscript for thesoundtrack of the installation and theoretical outline for her thesis inthe fine arts, HfbK Hamburg, 2006.

35 Nicole Messenlehner, prompter, research material for Die Worte sind nicht Lüge, sie sprechen eine bedingte Möglichkeit vonWahrheit und Realität (Words are not lies; they speak a con-ditional possibility of truth and reality), 2006

36 Nicole Messenlehner, Die Worte sind nicht Lüge, sie sprechen eine bedingte Möglichkeit von Wahrheit und Realität (Words arenot lies; they speak a conditional possibility of truth andreality), 2006. Face plate, glass, mirror with pearl-embroi-dered pillow.

37 Alexander Mayer and Tim Weschkalnies, collage, study for the installation in the AvAv—seminar, rehearsal, andexhibition space for the class Kombinatorische undProzessuale Formung (Combinatorial and procedural for-mation), HfbK Hamburg, 2003.

38 Eske Schlüters, Drawing for the jacket of Erzähltes erzählen, Kombinator 3 (Hamburg: Materialverlag, 2006).

3. Useful scale. (6) So we now use the country itself, asits own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well. (5) Ithas never been spread out yet, the farmers objected; theysaid it would cover the whole country and shut out thesunlight. (4) Have you used it much? (3) Only six inches.We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a

knew, a very poor, ragged man who was squatting in a darkcorner at the back of the room. All sorts of things were dis-cussed, and then it was suggested that everyone should tellwhat wish he would make if one were granted him. Oneman wanted money; another wished for a son-in-law; athird dreamed of a new carpenter’s bench; and so everyonespoke in turn. After they had finished, only a beggar in hisdark corner was left. Reluctantly and hesitantly he answeredthe question: “I wish I were a powerful king reigning over abig country. Then, some night while I was asleep in mypalace, an enemy would invade my country, and by dawnhis horsemen would penetrate to my castle and meet withno resistance. Roused from my sleep, I wouldn't have timeeven to dress and I would have to flee in my shirt. Rushingover hill and dale and through forests day and night, I wouldfinally arrive safely right here at the bench in the corner.This is my wish.” The others exchanged uncomprehendingglances. “And what good would this wish have done you?'someone asked. “I’d have a shirt,” was the answer. (WalterBenjamin, “Franz Kafka,” trans. Harry Zohn)

Alexander Mayer and Tim Weschkalnies, material from the working process for the installation in the AvAv, 2003

LLive montage—1. The archive presented. After previousexaminations of the iconicity of linguistic signs AlexanderMayer gathered textual and pictorial quotations and devel-oped an archival system in which he investigated questionsof the possibilities for making reference and the temporalitiesof systems for ordering. In exhibition situations he present-ed thematically chosen extracts from this archive, includingdifferent mediums, in temporary combinations that call tomind the provisional nature of each arrangement. Thus, forexample, in a slide installation in 2002 he analyzed thelanguages of discourse in different fields such as the culturesections of newspapers, political theory, and art history, andplaced these in fragments next to and against each otherthereby raising important questions on the textually trans-mitted construction of reality. In addition to the deconstruc-tion of the traditional categories for works, his research also

hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandestidea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on thescale of a mile to the mile! (2) About six inches to the mile.(1) What do you consider the largest map that would bereally useful?

Alexander Mayer and Tim Weschkalnies; five sentences from Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893) are mounted on a paper-wall construction in reverse order to the original. The first sentencethe visitor reads upon entering the room is the last in Carroll’s se-quence.

39 Alexander Mayer and Tim Weschkalnies, view of the paper-wall construction, installation in the AvAv, 2003

In a Hasidic village, so the story goes, Jews were sittingtogether in a shabby inn one Sabbath evening. They wereall local people, with the exception of one person no one

illustrates an expansion of authorship: in re-presentationsof the contents of the archive multiplications come about:adopted roles fuse in the multiple voices of a speaker, thedistributing to several performers nevertheless allows themto seemingly perform with one voice. For the last annual ex-hibition Mayer worked with two fellow students to conceivean information room that documented and made accessiblethe contributions of the sixty exhibiting artists during thecourse of the exhibition—that is, “live.” In this way Mayerbrought home the message that archiving is not just thework of belated safekeeping but rather can be understoodas an approach, like every artistic combination, montage,or collage, and the archivist cannot really hide behind themask of innocent service provider. > Narrate 3

Eran Schaerf, advisory opinion for Alexander Mayer for the application for project support, 2004

2. Spatial montage. “The starting point of my work was to explore fictitious spatial possibilities,” Luise Wagnerwrites, and even if not the only one, it is also the startingpoint for this year’s presentation of the Prozessuale undKombinatorische Formung class. It could also be said that anarchive and its possibilities for presentation are exhibitedhere. The archive of files, videotapes, and CDs is a compila-tion of projects that are works in progress or for which thecontext of the annual exhibition is not suitable and are madeaccessible to visitors here. The archive is, however, also thepotential of that which is available, which in its presentationturns into a possibility. Thus one day Mirjam Thomann,Karolin Meunier, Eske Schlüters, and Alexander Mayertook a look at Mayer’s archive—a collection of textual andpictorial quotations where any notion of infinity comes upshort—and presented the possibility. It is neither improvisa-tion, as the material that comes into play is predetermined,nor is it chance, as they arranged to meet and agreed toplay as many roles as the archive contains. Thus initially amontage of index card images and reading voices was pro-duced in which one thinks that infinity itself is doing thedirecting. Subsequently the question posed itself as towhether this montage can also occur in a space. And with

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receiver that corresponds to the idea of a nonhierarchicalmodel of dialogue. All participants are required to under-stand their roles as roles that are not predefined. And thesame applies not least to the visitors to the exhibition aswell; they perform an intellectual act of montage via theirspatial experience of the installation. The conditions thatmake this change of roles possible identify the seminar asan infinite language in which art is investigated far morethan it is transmitted. > Modulator

Modulator. Ein Verhandlungsraum für Sender und Empfänger im Rollenspiel (Modulator: A Negotiations Space for Transmitter and Receiver inRole Play), a project of the HfBK seminar on combinatorial analysis,press release for the exhibition Akademie: Kunst lernen und lehren,Kunstverein Hamburg, 2005

MMemory—as activity. The art of memory “seeks to memorisethrough a technique of impressing ‘places’ and ‘images’ onmemory. It has usually been classed as ‘mnemotechnics,’which in modern times,” Francis Yates wrote in 1966,“seems a rather unimportant branch of human activity. Butin the ages before printing a trained memory was vitallyimportant; and the manipulation of images in memorymust always to some extent involve the psyche as a whole.”(Yates, The Art of Memory) So it does not concern a techniquewith whose help one better remembers (> Narrate 2) howsomething happened; rather it is about how that which hap-pens is saved as an image to be evoked later and combinedwith further images. In the course of this the event is recon-structed less with regard to how it happened but more withregard to possible events that can be performed via theprocess of the evoking of the saved images and the condi-tions of their combination. Possible events distinguish them-selves in that they can also be combined in other ways.They do not claim to represent “how it was” or to speculatehow it could have been. They represent that that which

they represent they can also represent differently. Thus thepossible event marks a shifting from the representation ofthe event to a performance of the event as combination.These events could be called combinatorial events, a realitythat doesn’t depict a reality but renders it possible as combi-nation. The first condition of the combinatorial event couldbe the following: “what we state using certain letters that wehave freely decided upon can, as must be recognized, bestated in the same way using any other letters enlisted forthe purpose.” (Leibniz, Fragmente zur Logik) > Storage


45 Katrin Mayer, Spektakelvorwand (Pretext of the spectacle), 2004, Collage. Study for the work Shaking the Lines onthe Mirror of Time. > Searching 2

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what awareness does one do what one does in a space inwhich simultaneously and without consultation so muchmore is done than what one would be in a position to do onone’s own? The montage in space is a camera and micro-phone work that fragments and at the same time assemblessimultaneously occurring actions. But there is more thanone camera; and while one records the event, the event con-tinues in front of the other. Someone climbs out of the win-dow while in the sketch the window is just being finished.Hands are washed even though the fight only takes placelater. And just in case the actors have already bowed. Onecannot know after all whether the piece has already cometo an end without being noticed. > Narrate 2, > Narrate 3

Und um halb sechs hab ich dann Ja gesagt (And at Half Past Five I Then Said Yes), press release for the annual exhibition of theKombinatorische und Prozessuale Formung class, HfbK Hamburg,2002

(14)G: (in a whisper) Won’t you recognize me? I recognize you.How? By your lies. H: We tell the best lies to ourselves. G:We make eyes at them.(15)D: You have to learn to wait. For the small events as well.C: But you would say everything that is nameless shouldn’tbe named.(16)TV: (pure audio track from offstage, two voices) As always time isfar too short. And then? For example: if you need my lifethen come and take it.

Alexander Mayer, possible script fragment from Und um halb sechs hab ich dann Ja gesagt (And then at half past five I said yes), 2002

40 41 42 43 Stills from Und um halb sechs hab ich dann Ja gesagt (Andthen at half past five I said yes), 2002, production withstationary camera, panning camera, and hand camera,stationary and moving microphones, with Sigrid Behrens,Peter Hoppe, Un-ui Jang, Alexander Mayer, NicoleMessenlehner, Karolin Meunier, Stefan Moos, NinaPelletier, Christoph Rothmeier, Eran Schaerf, EskeSchlüters, Robert Schnackenburg, Peter Steckroth,Mirjam Thomann, Sabin Tünschel, Carola Wagenplast,Luise Wagner, Tim Weschkalnies, Joachim Zahn, andothers.

3. Generator of signs. Two signs next to each other andthe space between them fills with an interaction of possiblerelations. The space does not do this on its own, of course;a spectator is required to generate this connection. Thespectator thus reads two signs and forms an incalculablenumber—X-number—of relations. Generator X (2006)attempts to simulate such endless sequence of relationsbetween pictograms, created by the spectator. The Generatoris a result of a research, calling into questioning whethersequential arts like such as comic strips in respect to theirpotential to can be read as a musical instructions, as a musi-cal script, or as narrative elements of in a film. The picto-grams are cut into cigarette-paper, framed mounted in slide-frames, and projected onto a black curtain. Two slide pro-jectors are manipulated to run in at different speeds (directedcontrolled by midiMIDI). Accordingly they produce atremendous variety and multitude of relations and connec-tions. Slide projector A shows eighty slides while, duringthe same period of time, slide projector B shows only one;then A shows seventy-nine slides, while B shows two, andso forth, until slide projector A shows one slide and B,eighty. Thus, the projectors rotate in opposite directions. Itsuffices to shorten slide projector A with the cycle of eightyslides by the projection duration of one slide; consequentlyit takes eighty cycles until both slide projectors reach theirrespective starting positions again. The mechanical soundnoise of the slide projectors is amplified and permanentlymodulated in its pitch. > Addressee

Christoph Rothmeier, theoretical outline for his thesis in fine arts, HfbK Hamburg, 2005

44 Christoph Rothmeier, Pictograms aus Generator X(Pictograms from Generator X), 2006

4. Fictitious software. In terms of the practice of cine-matic montage, the Modulator is imaginary software thatmoderates the seminar by means of editing and by addedcontributions and is characterized by the totality of thesecontributions. As the total number of contributions istheoretically infinite, the Modulator has the potential toreconfigure itself with each additional contribution. Appliedto the teaching and learning situation at a college, theModulator is the expression of a reciprocal authorization:the one has a piece of knowledge that the other is ready toreceive. Both the one teaching and the one learning are seenin both roles here. It concerns a model of transmitter and

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modulator

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