The current pandemic had not only affected many poles lives in many different ways, it also kept me from following an idea that related to a project, connected to the work of a dead artist from France. Measuring time in years and weeks and days and hours is based on a system that people agreed upon. What we call a Friday or Sunday has a different name in other languages. The year 2020 has a different beginning and end in other cultural areas, and it also has different appellations.
So holding on to one established system is as relevant as holding on to any other, or to none. References and relations are, therefore, nothing else but conventions within an accepted operating system. Fine, I can live with that.
But I could not execute my own idea for a small, personal system of relations and operations. The pandemic prevented me from traveling to France and from there visiting a specific location at a specific time. That time passed, and I can never revisit my original idea, but I have not abandoned the initial desire to connect. Some of the ideas that I recognise in the other artist's life and work reverberated in my own work, so going to a specific location at a specific time and doing something there would have been a way to express this reverberation and to respond to it.
The journey to Paris had been planned for October 19th, 2020, but it could not take place, even a very, very brief visit would have been very, very difficult, based on the restrictions and limitations that we have to follow. As a second element of my original plan, I wanted to install the outcome of the trip at a gallery in Vienna.
The date for the opening had also been defined as November 27th, 2020, so I worked on an alternative solution for this enterprise. Circumstances got even more in the way, and on that specific day, no-one in Austria was allowed to do anything, or at least almost anything. From working on "Plan A" and switching to "Plan B", I had to consider "Plan C" and even "Plan D" - but it didn't end there. No possible audience and no material and no substance to present, all that was not a very encouraging situation. What I ended up doing was something near a "Plan Z", the last possible thing to come up with. And I did like that, ok, in the end. I gave the materialised alternative idea a title and information that goes like this:
"Friday I'm In Love"
performance - text - audio-visuals - installation
Opening: Friday, 27 November 2020
Due to the current lockdown visiting the exhibition is difficult
and complicated, and confusing, and rather strange
viewers discretion advised
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1 - hexagesimal recurrence of the coupling partitions
2 - sexagesimales wiederauftreten der kopplungspartitionen
3 - shestidesyaterichnaya povtoryayemost' razdelitel'nykh peregorodok
4 - kappuringupātishon no rokujisshinhō ni yoru saihatsu
5 - atarlú sexagesimal na deighiltí cúplála
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How it works?
Find a wall with a minimum size of approx. 3 by 3 metersor approx. 10 by 10 feet. Allow a distance in front of the wall of at least 5 feet or at least 1,5 meters. Find a person who is willing to read and perform a text for a video recording. Write a text that will take about 2 to 3 minutes to read and perform. Mount the background posters in an irregular order on the wall. Explain to the performer that the text should be presented as if a large audience would listen. During the presentation, the performer (male or female) is marking elements on the posters, potentially writing on them, or making marks. Record the person reading and performing the text in front of the wall. Repeat the recording as often as you and the performer are willing to do and select the best parts from each recording, so one complete set of the compiled recording can be constructed. The recording can be made before the exhibition or at the opening. Find a way to make this recording play audio-visually during the exhibition near the wall.
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So although I created something quite different to what my intention had been, I am pleased with the unexpected outcome.
And - it can now be repeated in a way that would allow it to grow and evolve, no matter if that would happen now, or in 60 years ...
Oh, well, I would probably not live as long, but that's a different story.