Epic space — is how I would now describe art idea no. 8,582,048 that I made during a Berlin residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in 1998-9. 

As far as I know, epic space does not exist in visual art. At least, not in three-dimensional work. A depiction might be of an epic scene, but not itself epic. Though this leads to questions of the episodic, so I’ll leave off with etymology before I negate epic space.

The Odyssey is an epic poem by Homer from the late eighth-century BCE. It spans Odysseus’ seven-year homeward journey from triumph in Troy to redemption in his hometown of Ithaca. It traverses countless adventures in between that occur within a framework of these two places.

Unlike The Odyssey, art idea no. 8,582,048 doesn’t take place within a pre-destined beginning and end. However, just like The Odyssey, the work’s separate situations balloon around each other to find their cause, their beginning, outside their immediate situation to no end.

Take, for example, something in our own lives — a letter sent through the post now resting on a table. Its immediate situation involves our direct attention in the room in which we read it. The letter connects, however, to another situation outside our room. An office has sent it, say, if it’s a bill. The envelope links the two disparate situations. To borrow a term from the semiotician Juri Lotman, each of these two situations is a self-determined semiosphere. 

Art idea no. 8,582,048 interlaces three such semiospheres within its bounds. Each begins off-stage with an exhibition invitation gallery recipients open in the privacy of their homes (a poster pictured above). A self-supporting artwork with curved corners and green, orange and blue pattern, is perpendicular to ‘desk no. 5’ with a photocopy of a Russian constructivist in the background.

In a subsequent semiosphere, we discover this is the Bureau of Art Ideas, Berlin. The artwork, evidently registered, is art idea no. 8,582,048. Two critics, nevertheless, have pulled the artwork apart and lose its reason for being, its cause, its centre, in their arguments. The overall artwork is therefore caught at this moment: a choice between four replacement centres.