Size: extra large

no answer: black

Encyclopaedia of art that falls apart: Encyclopaedia of art that fits together

With all her might she presses flat the front doorbell as it wails the summoning monotony of its unrepentant beckoning inside the room. All she needs is an answer, nothing more. Then the situation will finally fit together and make sense.

[floorplan detail] Front door outside the room, where she waits for an answer

But nothing moves. No hastening meets the soliciting drone of the front doorbell. The din of its demand does not disturb the still paintings, chairs, black cube and table inside the room. He is not home. There is no answer.

[floor plan details]
– Where, through a conversation between them, everything fits together
– chair
– table

07/02/2008
situation no. 41: happy new year

Situation no. 41 begins with a happy new year card
posted to regular gallery visitors before
the exhibition commences

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF REPETITIONS IN ART
Blue: Did you read what was handwritten on those cards?
Grey: You didn’t look, did you?
PAGE 9

– data room
————————————

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF REPETITIONS IN ART
Blue: Of course, didn’t you? How could one help but look — they’re there, aren’t they?
Grey: But a card is private, in a public sort of way.
PAGE 9

– passageway for those who looked
– passageway for those who didn’t
– looking library
– storage room for lost plinths kept in corners that can’t be found
– library of repetitions in art
– chair
– first floor: repeated colours
– second floor: repeated stripes
– the orange phase where everything happens twice
————————————

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF REPETITIONS IN ART
Blue: Private or not, I’ll tell you one thing, the design’s been done before. It’s a copy of a famous fabric pattern I’ve seen in a museum, somewhere.
PAGE 9

– data room
————————————

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF REPETITIONS IN ART
Grey: Everything, these days, seems to have been done before. Everything’s a repeat of something else.
Blue: Yes, but sometime’s there’s a difference, isn’t there?
PAGE 9

– waiting room
– a different chair to sit in after painting a coat of green
– ‘untitled green: to be repeated’, painted green, five times
– corner where someone once whispered ‘happy new year’
———————————

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF REPETITIONS IN ART
Grey: Maybe in time and space, but so what? If I were playing my favourite record and it got stuck, midway — repeating the same thing over and over — I would change it.
PAGE 9

– data room
———————————

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF REPETITIONS IN ART
Blue: Of course! And if it didn’t get stuck you would play in only once.
PAGE 9

– leaning room, for one red painting only
– split room
– where someone waits for the red painting to be hung, listening to the same sad song three times
– where no one waits
———————————

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF REPETITIONS IN ART
Grey: Only once! Are you crazy? I play my favourites again and again. But that’s different, isn’t it? Anyway, don’t you have a meeting at the Bureau* to go to?
PAGE 9

– data room
———————————

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF REPETITIONS IN ART
Blue: Yes. They want me to look at some results of a survey they conducted recently; something about ‘temporal spacings of repetitions’ in art. They’re meant to be quite pleasing.
PAGE 9

– where someone telephoned someone else, to invite them to look at the latest survey’s painted results, but got an engaged signal
– stairs that go nowhere
– stares that come back
– empty centre of the data room where information collected from undercover investigations is leaked
– room for a mathematician equipped with survey results, calculator and stamp pad; and the hope to measure difference in time’s repetition
———————————

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF REPETITIONS IN ART
Grey: Pleasing? I’ve heard that they’re just stripes — again!
*Bureau of Repetitions in Art
PAGE 9

– data room
———————————

BUREAU OF REPETITIONS IN ART

Due to an increasing demand to investigate the temporal spacings of repetitions in art, the Bureau has finally devised the following survey and requires your assistance to complete it.

Your instructions are to receive eight ‘happy new year’ greetings cards (designed specifically for this project) posted to you on separate days. Upon receiving each card, please mark the date and time on the adjacent form.

The data thus collected will then be analysed by our mathematicians, who will make public the results in the form of a wall painting.

We thank you, in advance, for your participation, and ensure that the covert nature of this investigation is necessary to further our understanding of art.

PARTICIPANT TYPE: N – CURATOR OF CONTEMPORARY ART

08/02/2000
art idea no. 8,582,048 [part 1]
Encyclopaedia of an Art Idea

When two art authorities conducted a critique on art idea no. 8,582,048, they removed its centre so that through it they could see the position of each other’s argument. The centre was then lost. Some time later, a photograph mysteriously circulated showing the ‘complete’ idea being registered at ‘desk no. 5’. Upon seeing this a Museum included the idea in a survey on Minimal art intended to coincide with the current exhibition, a homage to the constructivist Varvara Stepanova. The authorities therefore searched for the idea’s missing centre and, in so doing, found four possibilities. The question thus arose: which of the four is the missing one? We, a handful of willing viewers, were asked to decide. The decision, however, has not yet been made for ‘viewers’ are not to touch the art and as the idea is in the other room, we can only compare it to the possibilities via memory. This process is laborious and up until this hour [12.09 Uhr] of this day [Mittwoch 18.11.1998] , our memories have failed. Albeit, we do suspect that not one of the four is the ‘original’. Nevertheless we must continue and select one, the best one, quickly — for time is running out and the homage to Stepanova will soon be over.

Page 17

————————

waiting room at the Bureau Of Art Ideas, Berlin

library of forgotten ideas

stairs

desk no. 5

filing cabinet of registered art ideas

d/sided shelf

chair

entrance for artists wishing to register their ideas

entrance for art authorities
12/06/1998
art idea no. 8,582,048 [part 2]
exhibition invitation sent to regular gallery visitors and
available at the exhibition as a poster/catalogue,
Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
Encyclopaedia of an Art Idea

When two art authorities conducted a critique on art idea no. 8,582,048, they removed its centre so that through it they could see the position of each other’s argument. The centre was then lost. Some time later, a photograph mysteriously circulated showing the ‘complete’ idea being registered at ‘desk no. 5’. Upon seeing this a Museum included the idea in a survey on Minimal art intended to coincide with the current exhibition, a homage to the constructivist Vavara Stepanova. The authorities therefore searched for the idea’s missing centre and, in so doing, found four possibilities. The question thus arose: which of the four is the missing one? We, a handful of willing viewers, were asked to decide. The decision, however, has not yet been made for ‘viewers’ are not to touch the art and as the idea is in the other room, we can only compare it to the possibilities via memory. This process is laborious and up until this hour [12.09 Uhr] of this day [Mittwoch 18.11.1998] , our memories have failed. Albeit, we do suspect that not one of the four is the ‘original’. Nevertheless we must continue and select one, the best one, quickly — for time is running out and the homage to Stepanova will soon be over.

Page 17

————————

waiting room at the Bureau Of Art Ideas, Berlin

library of forgotten ideas

stairs

desk no. 5

filing cabinet of registered art ideas

d/sided shelf

chair

entrance for artists wishing to register their ideas

entrance for art authorities
12/06/1998
art idea no. 8,582,048 [part 3]
exhibition invitation sent to regular gallery visitors and
available at the exhibition as a poster/catalogue,
Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
Encyclopaedia of an Art Idea

When two art authorities conducted a critique on art idea no. 8,582,048, they removed its centre so that through it they could see the position of each other’s argument. The centre was then lost. Some time later, a photograph mysteriously circulated showing the ‘complete’ idea being registered at ‘desk no. 5’. Upon seeing this a Museum included the idea in a survey on Minimal art intended to coincide with the current exhibition, a homage to the constructivist Varvara Stepanova. The authorities therefore searched for the idea’s missing centre and, in so doing, found four possibilities. The question thus arose: which of the four is the missing one? We, a handful of willing viewers, were asked to decide. The decision, however, has not yet been made for ‘viewers’ are not to touch the art and as the idea is in the other room, we can only compare it to the possibilities via memory. This process is laborious and up until this hour [12.09 Uhr] of this day [Mittwoch 18.11.1998] , our memories have failed. Albeit, we do suspect that not one of the four is the ‘original’. Nevertheless we must continue and select one, the best one, quickly — for time is running out and the homage to Stepanova will soon be over.

Page 17

———————

waiting room at the Bureau Of Art Ideas, Berlin

library of forgotten ideas

stairs

desk no. 5

filing cabinet of registered art ideas

d/sided shelf

chair

entrance for artists wishing to register their ideas

entrance for art authorities
12/06/1998
To make a work of thoughtful art
Offset printed card sent through
the post as the exhibition’s announcement card.
Encyclopaedia of Thoughtful Art
To make a work of thoughtful art please follow the guidelines below.

From the square above cut out a thought into a shape and lean it next to number 1.

From this thought cut out its anger and place it on the plinth at number 2.

From this anger cut out its love and place it at number 3.

From this love cut out its understanding and return it to where the thought had first been taken, at number 4.

Now ask a passer-by the time [21:57] and the date [Freitag.13.10].

——— page ’95 ———

Thanks to Katharina Harms and Christian Bumke for the translation, and to Thomas Taubert for asking a passerby the time and date and add them to the Encyclopaedia to complete the work.
14/10/1995

Gail Hastings