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NAILING THE WHATNESS OF ABSENCE

Nailing the Whatness Of Absence is a monologue that was commissioned by The

University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and first performed during the Jour Fixe of the
department of ArtScience Visualization themed “Art as Research. Research as Art.
Anything goes?” at the Expositur, on May 27, 2011, before an audience of invited
guests. The script below was first published and performed at this very venue (Room
5).

Introduction

Good evening_ Hello everyone.

I do know many of you, but introduce myself anyway. I'm Herwig Kopp,
and I'd like to thank you for coming to this presentation of my project for the
University of Applied Arts` Master Program of “Art & Science”. It's called
"Nailing The Whatness of Absence" and, as most of you have probably guessed
from the cameras and the lights and your own presence and absence of others,
this is it. This is presenting "The Whatness of Absence' – but where the hell is the
nail?
So, I'm happy, I'm pleased, I'm honored, I'm privileged, I'm really thrilled,
really, to welcome you, officially, to Room Number 5 and not Slaughterhouse 5,
which is, of course, a site-specific project.
I'm going to have a tough time topping the themes and remarks from last
months, but I'll do my best.
I have to begin by saying that I've known Art & Science for many years—more
than a decade – and most of those years, grey zones of Art & Science were my
only collections, even when I didn't want recollections, when I was against the
whole idea that art was built, conceived to be bought and sold, that a collective was
there, trying to buy in – a collective trying to create something out of nothing.

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 Later, I refused t0 give a talk about my first prospectus project, with the Einstein
Forum, but preferred to be in their basement at the official welcome and had somebody
else (names, names are important, do not forget the names, contributors, actual owners,
distributors, nests, thankfulness as an economy of collaboration, thankfulness is for
free), Sandra Manhartseder, holding that talk, who was not there, too, but present in a
video she sent in. Some of you may remember that event, when I started making sounds
with Markus Steinkellner (Jakuzi´s Attempt, id) in the cellar during the inauguration for
no apparent reason and couldn't stop. It's true.
http://soundcloud.com/gordian-times/answerstoaquestionneverposed
Points to someone in audience.
I know you remember that.
Video BenB from the project Mind – the Gap [0:57min]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWJBQLiLfw0
Pause (thinking like trying to remember faces)
Maybe I am just being erratic. Well, I can't guarantee that it won't happen
again this evening but . . . not now. I'm not choking up, really. I'm . . . just a little dry.

Takes a sip of water, then clears throat. Reading:

The model of Art as Science stimulation, or science as artful theory
construction might be viewed as a representation of the application of only methods, in
particular, in representational cultures. But what is this in between relationships of
diverse artistic and scientific positions, what is forming the line of battle, the formation
of the Holy Armada performing a “Crossing the T” maneuver: Steaming with the enemy
off to the side enables to launch salvoes at the same target with both the forward and
rear turrets, maximizing the chances for a hit. It also makes ranging error less critical
for the ship doing the crossing, while simultaneously more critical for the ship being
crossed.

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 Can you be critical about that, besides taking the historical position that such
maneuvers could be outdated?

(Source: Stephan Brunker)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_T
Isn´t all about providing crucial support for artists whose work has been
rendered invisible because of political content, lack of marketability, or its challenging
inquiry into the nature of art institutions?
Times New Roman 9 in Helvetica 10
The University of Applied Arts` newest project in the Master Program „Art &
Science“ titeled “Art as Research. Research as Art. Anything goes?” is a perfect
example of its commitment to critical and challenging art.
For this project, The University of Applied Arts has selected an artist who is a
bleeding practitioner of this genre, but after substantial blood loss it may not be called
art anymore or is leading somewhere else. Maybe he is just trying to copy things and
paste them into different roles which do not really play a role.
His work is inventive, poignant, and brazen as well as humorous. (Hahaha –
and blunt. Let´s laugh together Hahaha – participatory culture). Isn´t there enough irony
and postmodern delusion out there? Words, just playing with words. Do we have to
repeat that?
Repetition is a weapon. Didn´t we already understand the epistemological gain?
Didn`t we buy it? Is this a role, ruthless honesty, or a brand strategy? He's an artist who
takes no prisoners, even when he works in the belly of the beast. His performative
critiques are meticulously researched and tinkered portraits of institutions, revealingly

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appropriated from original sources, yet they're often, they're often also tantalizingly
ambiguous. And he's also successfully explored innovative models for artistic practice
that would liberate artists from the structures of traditional object production.
By engaging him to develop a project relevant to a foundation — and to deliver
it here as well for a public educational institution which got privatized lately — the
ArtScience Visualization team (namely Valerie Deifel, Bernd Kräftner, Juliana Herrero
& Virgil Widrich – names, don´t forget the names…) is endorsing Herwig Kopp´s role
as an institutional critic. But maybe that´s too much of an label which leads you away,
posing a trap for instant categorization, putting things in drawers – leaning back,
reluctantly, because of an eager impression of having understood something.
It´s a battle of lost Esperanza. A desperate move on mowed lawns floating to
avoid second Trafalgars. Why not playing it safe? Why not reversing course in poor
visibility?
Art is nothing but decisive fleet action, science nothing but crossing all the
T's and dotting all the I's. – or was it the other way around? Maybe it is about
understanding. Maybe its more about the „nothing but“, about loosing the point of view
in an investigation going to deep into the study of multifactorial processes, relations,
applications, developments, methods, media and organization in researching off-
controversial societal thematic space which is formed here, now by you and me and
Room 5.
Is understanding an art? Artistic epistemology – is there such a thing?
Let´s talk about artistic research: The phrase itself – derived from wording in
successive university laws for almost the last forty years – thus reflects a particular
responsibility of the state-financed arts universities, and one which, in the more recent
formulations, explicitly aligns this with research.[...] The term, „Entwicklung und
Erschließung der Künste“ (development and valorization of arts), as a proxy for
research with a focus on the arts, is very much an Austrian formulation. Terms
elsewhere vary, depending on the country, the discipline, and in some cases the
approach being taken. In certain parts of Europe, the term artistic research has been
adopted to describe this newly emerging area of research activity. But the term is only
one of a number that seek to delineate the distinctiveness of the territory: for others, the
inclusion of the word “practice” is key – hence the use of adjectives such as “practice-
based” and “practice-led” to characterise the research. The British s, the American z.
http://www.fwf.ac.at/de/public_relations/printprodukte/info/info68-09-01.pdf#pag...
It is always researching something, things we already know of, heard of, seen,
assume, feel at our fingertips. Something to record, remember, store. Concepts which
indicate that something is vanishing, so it has to be caught. The Unknown is excluded
but summoned as a whip to faster dissect and utilize a given „something“. Foster
dissection – vivisections are only beautiful in live speech.
Researching what is not here, pinning it positively down like a rare specimen
might be a real challenge.

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 Something will be different when you read this again later yourself as a script,
this script, a less conspicuous socio-technological rupture. A prerequisite of your thirst
in becoming the text, interweaving your results with a departure of no return, the gun
point of research, the point blank of artistic range, the vanishing point of representation.
Don´t loose it, when you are lost. Challenge your position. Your niche is your
muscle. Be a bulldozer.
Your central perspective is survival.
Spaces and races.
Point A to Point B. Nothing more.

(Source: Peter Isotalo)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanishing_Point_(1971_film)

Herwig, please?

/ Artist
Turns to left, nods gravely, then reads:
This evening represents a sequel of a very satisfying project. It is the
appropriate moment to thank the Einstein Forum for its support. My hope, however,
is that such thanks are unnecessary. I was commissioned by the Einstein Forum to
do a certain job. My hope is that the Einstein Forum has found that job well done.
What do I, as an artist, provide? What do I satisfy?
It does not really matter who is speaking. It does not really matters who is
repeating this. My presence is not necessarily truth-bearing it is interest-bearing. It
matters for the conditions, the economics of exchange, the performative bodily illusion
of dissolving with a present audience of bodies here, in Room 5. One body. One

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fragmented whole without essence. Of course just a loud thought (your thought whilst
reading and understanding this is silent). It´s not that I obstructed the door to be your
obstacle for entering an (stuttering) interactive space of art. To be that interaction means
exposing oneself, to count on some kind of presence, to play with presence. Pleasance,
nice to meet you.
It´s not about economies of access. It´s about economies of access and excess.
It´s about the economy of contradictions, dichotomies. Contradictory politics of excess,
restriction as means to control the axis of excess.
What gives you excess? What is in there in between the doors where
everybody wants to be in? What is the what in the question about legitimacy? What is
the whatness of horse?
Horse is the whatness of allhorse.
Streams of tendency and eons they worship.
Joyce J., Ulysses, Ch. 9, Scylla and Charybdis
What rules do you have to follow to become a certain function? What is your
form to comply with function? Function follows form, whatever others may have told
you.

http://academics.triton.edu/faculty/fheitzman/tallofficebuilding.html
You are forms. Forget your purpose. Fate is form. Is function overrated, a
gimmick, a gadget, a marketing tool (a screw driver, a wrench?) to sell your emptiness?
A safe haven? A representational building? A safe house with no doors and high walls
besides a military complex?
The immediate answer to those questions can be found in the function of
Art & Science and it´s intersections. But if I serve those functions, it is not because I
have defined my activity as a service. Those functions are generally fulfilled in the
exchange that constitutes any kind of patronage. They are fulfilled because the
professional prestige I, as an artist, augment when my name is publicized by a patron is
identical to the prestige they acquire by being associated with a particular kind of art.

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Its the same quantity of the same currency: a profit in moral legitimacy generated by
activities with “higher” aims; a profit in intellectual legitimacy generated by the
method of self-reflection; a profit in social legitimacy generated by association with
exclusive tastes and practices; and a profit in professional legitimacy generated by
demonstrations of competence in our respective spheres of activity.
Maybe I am just putting my worst fears on display.

Takes deep breath to continue—

/ Critic
Thank you . . .
Tums to left.
. . . Herwig, for an exemplary presentation.
It is important to pose and a create crossroads emerging for finding or
rejecting answers. Find emerging markets – quite often different from existential
positions, points of convergence, respective specialized knowledge, ivory towers in the
amygdala of representational productive and reproductive conditions. But it is
necessary to fall out of the role given to an artist and jeopardize the relationships with
the hands that feed you? Isn´t institutional critique also a method, an illusory step out of
the system to cement a certain position and entertain those who are bored by routine?
It is difficult to imagine what a critical art practice could be after the end of the
Noughties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_(decade)
One factor in the demise of radical practice may be art's own collaboration with
the forces of spectacle culture. If visibility has become arts primary horizon of

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aspiration, then for any radical aesthetic practice to be historically convincing it must
now define itself in opposition to that culture.
Tonight we are considering artists whose projects may once meet this criterion,
artists whose interventions may invite the viewer to recognize the fundamental
conditions of art and its inability to resolve its contradictions. As a radical contestation
of the hegemonic ordering of experience, your practice will demonstrate that
the desire to commemorate and to collect — which we inscribe as a grotesque echo of
the fate
(reading code generated by OCR software scanning Andrea Fraser´s published
monologue)
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S-IJOAd
IUO S
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awe: am 2

of radical critique — is inextricably bound up with forms of culturally engineered

adulation operating at the very center of artistic production and reception. Undulation.
We thus invert and counter all of the artistic fallacies that hindsight and history have
made evident. Indeed, it would be difficult to conceive of any practice that could
surpass this as a synthesis of the most complex and radical artistic projects of the near
future as well as the coming 21st century. And it's a pleasure to introduce you to this
evening spectacle. You do not need me. You do not need him.
Looks to right.

/ Artist
Um . . .
Turns quickly to lefl.
. . . thank you. Um, I don't want to sound coquettish—this could easily come off the

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wrong way—but as an artist I'm always disappointed. Even though
I say the end result isn't important, I'm never satisfied. But I guess that's why I
keep trying. As an artist, I try to create an autonomous space in which a critical
position can be made dear. People come to see my work, maybe they spend some
time. I hope I can make people feel involved, but it's not about interactivity. I give
something to people, but I don't expect communication. I hope I can make
people think, but I don't want to be didactic—I don't want to make political art, but what
I say is political. I don't want to intimidate or exclude people, but frontal instruction – a
theatrical form – may intimidate and exclude people. I want to implicate people in my
work — I mean, immerse them in a world. That art of immersion could be my political
statement.
A few days later, a woman named Sue was to wash a different T-shirt from one
of the Lisbon shows when she noticed that the tour dates included several boldface
numbers. Fans quickly interpreted the sequence as a Los Angeles telephone number.
People who called it heard a recording of a newscaster announcing. „Presidential adress:
America is born again,“ followed by a distorted snippet of what could only be a new
Nine Inch Nail song.
Frank Rose (2011) The Art of Immersion, W.W. Norton & Company p. 29

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(Source: Ryan Tanaka)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(album)

What's most important is not what people see in my work, but what they see when they
confront reality again. I work in between reality and fiction. So, why am I an artist? I
guess it's because I take a critical position toward the world. It's not about hope. It's
about showing my distrust with dominant discourses.
But maybe that´s too simple. Maybe it´s a complex. An industrial-artificial
complex, inverted AI,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_(disambiguation)
a multi-component compound, more a suspension than a dissolution, where policy and
monetary relationships between legislators of artistic production, scientific forces and
the industrial sector that supports them collide. These relationships include socio-
political contributions, institutional approval for budget spending, lobbying to support
bureaucracies and beneficial legislation and oversight of the industry. It is a type of
amalgam triangle without corners, a semi-liquid cornerstone of modern practices
founding on hollow ground.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military–industrial_complex

/ Critic
Shaking head.
How much information can you receive from one artist in a few minutes?
Usually, when an artist explains his work, it lessens the allure. But that's hardly the case
in this case. His likeable bombardment is an art experience in itself. If there would be a
facebook button attached, I would click it.
http://www.facebook.com/herwig.kopp

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 The simultaneity of thoughts passing through the brain is never easy to capture,
especially if the brain in question is not a single entity, but a multitude.
Ask Antonio Negri spinning Spinoza.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitude

(Cetrimonium Bromide; Source: Edgar 181)

It´s topical medication. Free from prescription.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ointment

Well, he's in possession of just such a remarkable organisation. Tons of

fragments claiming to be a game. Being a game to be collected. No supporter can
possibly keep up with the unnerving complexity. But I'll try.
Simply put, his work is excessive. And the best part is, you don't have to worry
about the meaning of it all. Mind – the gap´s emphasis on the dash for instance. The
connecting principle in question is heavily tortured to play the archimedean point about
meaning. The trash in between words symbolizing how a world view arises, how reality
is shaped, how normality is conceived. Aren´t we over symbolizations? (Here the z is
ok)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_point

Works that rise to a level of humanistic allegory significant for all of us, even
while we may not know exactly what they mean.

Looks to right.
I think we're all extraordinarily lucky to be able to honor here this evening. It is

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already evening, isn´t it? You don´t see that clearly in summer. Especially when the
weather was as warm and charming as today. 5 degrees more and it would be too much.
A touch too much. What a beautiful evening to meet and greet the artists.
Walks around and greeting every one of the present people, shaking hands with
each of them. Those who refrain are getting hugs.
There is not much to say about the center of signifiance, or the Signifier in
person, because it is a pure abstraction no less than a pure principle; in other words, it is
nothing.
G. Deleuze, F. Guattari (1987): A thousand plateaus. Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. Univ. of Minnesota Press. Chapter: 587B.B.-A.D. 70: On Several
Regimes of Signs. p. 115

/ Artist
Looks to lefl.
Thank you, its, uh, uh, thank you, uh.
Speaking in a painfully slow, almost stuttering voice.
If I, uh, if I, uh, if I, uh, deserve, uh, any of this, uh, I think that it can only
be because, uh, because I have, uh, finally arrived, uh, at a point where, uh, my
work has become, uh, has become, uh universal. It's about, uh, it's about, the
desire, uh, of all human beings, uh, to be free and, uh, to achieve, uh, to achieve,
uh, to achieve a kind of, um, self-realization; uh, to achieve, uh, to achieve, uh,
to achieve . . . something. It's about achievement.
And, uh, all of my work, uh, investigates, uh, different possibilities, uh,
of what it means, uh, to imagine yourself, uh, within the broadest possible
parameters.
And, uh, um, that's why I, uh, I don't like to, uh, to talk about my work. I
made it, and, uh, and, uh, I hope, I hope, uh, that`s enough.

/ Critic
Oh, maybe it is not enough. It is so much more than not enough. It is so much more that
I or any single person or the most devoted public may reckon with. But usually we try to
conceal our embarrassment.
Reads playfully:
216 217
Q4014
BUO $5
$15313 U
3\flOJ JM H 3
Arma virumque cano. Of arms and the man I sing. For opening doors on new
realities and reawakening our dreams, it is my privilege to confer on you the very
highest honor. As an artist, and as a friend of Fordism — a myth, driving around in
Capri at night, cereals in the morning, making babies at the beaches before sunset in the

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muddy waters of the blue lagoon.
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/the-ford-capri-as-an-artists-muse/
Multum ille et terris iactatus et alto vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob
iram. This man was battered helplessly both on land and at sea by the viciousness of the
higher powers, thanks to the obdurate wrath of Juno the savage. (No idea what car Juno
would drive)
Publius Vergilius Maro, Aeneid I, 1 – 33

/ Artist
Oh stop it! Stop it! You're embarrassing me!

/ Critic
Mumbling:
Musa, mihi causas memora..., "O Muse, recount to me the causes..."
That's what l love about the guy: his modesty!
You know, the last time I went to his studio, he'd been working. It was full of
new work. But I was at a loss. It was so different, it was so new. So I asked him to
give me a little guidance. Well, he paused for a minute and then he said, “I have
to think because I don't want to give you the propaganda."

/ Artist
Undresses partly.
No, I'm not shy anymore. I learned a very simple social strategy. The trick is
to say as little as possible to as few people as possible and to keep moving. That
way, it looks like l'm circulating when I'm actually just walking away.
Breaks into a big smile, waves, and pretends to leave the podium.
No, seriously, l’m honored—really, I'm honored—to be, ehem, honored
here this evening.
You know, “remember me" is what all artists whisper in their work. It's a
mark you want to leave in the world. It's still you even when you're not you anymore.
When you're gone. If my work really has brought me indifference, that's what it
means. If not, it has failed me at the deepest level.
So, remember me.

/ Critic
It was so right, so now. I wanted to take it home. We want various things of
art—to reflect the world, to perfect the world — and of artists—to be one of us, to be
better than us. Well, the fact is, you are better than us. You more beautiful than we are,
you more successful, you are much better artists with a much more interesting life.
You are our fantasy. You live our fantasies for us.

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/ Artist
Strips down loosing the jacket, the tie, the shirt revealing an light orange T-shirt
with the words: „Wir planen diesen Schritt um den sich ändernden Bedürfnissen
unserer Kunden so effizient und wettbewerbsfähig wie möglich Rechnung zu tragen.“
Reading:
We plan this step to take the changing needs of our customers into account,
being as efficient and competitive as possible.
István hat jetzt Martins Job, Die Zeit, 28.07.2005 Nr.31
http://www.zeit.de/2005/31/schweinfurt

I'm not a person today. I'm an object in an artwork. And it is largely not mine.
Steps away from the podium and stands motionless for 15 seconds.

/ Critic
That's great! Isn't he great?! He's great! Exciting work.
In the end, a good artist is a rich artist and a rich artist is a good artist. But for
me, it's also about creating space for freewheeling people with the guts to invest in their
dreams. I love that kind of vision. I think we all do. The thrill, the fantasy, the sleek
world where everything falls into place. He is staggeringly corporate, breathtakingly
professional and eager to entertain. And I do hope he'll say a few words to us this
evening.

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Looks to right.

/ Artist
Yeah, I'll say a few words.
I used to think that I was changing the world.
Laughs.
No, I'd just like to say that, um, I think the only interesting people are the
people who say nothing. Or just less. Yeah, that's what I think. I really like that piece
Nauman did—you know that piece? Um, The true artist helps the world by revealing
mystic truths. And you go, oh, yeah, great. And then you go, oh God, oh fuck, you
know, what is this shit – or Burden nailed to a Beetle in the 70ies.

(Source: Robert Couse-Baker)

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 N0, I love saying a few words at events like this.
Okay, here're a few more words. How about, “—„ That's a great statement
anywhere, right?
Right?!
Well, why don't you all say nothing now! Shut up! N0t one word. Do n0t think.
Do not breathe. Cease to exist. Start with your fingers, then your hands...
Steps away from podium and closes the eyes, closes the mouth, then turns around and
raises slowly the arms and shakes the palms and fingers.
I love you all.
Okay, how about nothing more, please? Hey, I'm not being funny. You know
that, don't you? Look, I'm just trying to do my fucking best.
Where`s my cheque?

/ Critic
It will be sent to your bank account by our secretary, Sonja Orman.
Yes, yes and you always do do your, your fucking best.
You were our first major component when we started combining art, and we
considered it an act of sheer courage. It was “difficult” work—it was totally grotesque!
In a regime of signs practice always appeals to several combined regimes, in
other words, how every regime of signs or semiotic is concretely mixed. But how is
nothingness mixed? Or remixed? How is what is left out and left over blended? Can we
be blended by curiosity, spite, irony, ecstasy?

There is nothing to explain, nothing to interpret. It is the pure abstract

machine of a twilight state. White wall/black hole? But depending on the combinations,
the wall could just as well be black, and the hole white. The balls can bounce off a wall
or spin into a black hole. Even upon impact they can have the relative role of a hole in
relation to the wall, just as when they are rolling straight ahead they can have the
relative role of a wall in relation to the hole they are heading for. They circulate in the

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white wall/black hole system. Nothing in all of this resembles a face, yet throughout the
system faces are distributed and faciality traits organized. Nevertheless, the abstract
machine can be effectuated in other things besides faces, but not in any order, and not
without the necessary foundation.
G. Deleuze, F. Guattari (1987) A thousand plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Univ. of Minnesota Press. Chapter: Year Zero: Faciality p. 169

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2bPTs8fspk
Derrida “What Comes Before the question..?” Video (till 4min 10)
The Foundation.
Faces. Cassavetes knew how to look into faces.
Feces. Human digestive products. Recognizable, sellable, lighter than gold.
Hulls with black breaches staring into the night shouting silently for help. Loose your
face, become dimensionless. Get recycled.

/ Artist
Yeah, well, you know I really do appreciate the support. It gets harder and
harder to be an artist. Attention can be incredibly cruel, from critics, and even
other artists, who think they're so superior.
I mean, if I'm such shit and my work is such shit, then why don't you just
leave me alone?
220 22!

/ Critic
But if you're really bad you tell the truth and people don't want to hear the truth.
If you're honest about how stupid and fucked over life is, you end up in the tabloids. I
don't go looking for you. It just comes in a big stinking tidal wave. I'm used to it. It's
boring.

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/ Artist
I just want to say that my real achievement is getting up in the morning;
staying alive and not giving up. Sure, I've had a few good moments workwise,
but nothing I'd consider a masterpiece. Let's keep things in perspective. The level
here is pretty minor. But at least I haven't fallen in with the system.
I should probably also say that my current project does not rely on public
funds.

Your work has the power to change lives. It changed mine.

Art with both emotional depth and real political belief is anathema to an art
world as cynical as ours. If mainstream artists (and critics) often reproduce the
values they claim to oppose, then perhaps only those artists who have been forced
to remain on the margins can reveal the true nature of power.

/ Artist
Back behind the podium.
Recognition is really weird.

/ Critic
Which Charade you may expect? Which car thou shalt drive, if the destination
is not within grasp? Behind which curtain do you hide? The ascription of these titles
exceeds determining whether the tools of the trade in question are microscopes and test-
tubes, cafes and cigarettes, or easels and oil-paints. Rather they identify the kind of
thinking that each group practices.
In physics horror vacui, or plenism, is a theory first proposed by Aristotle in
the Fourth book of Physics (or Physica) that nature abhors a vacuum, and therefore
empty space would always be trying to suck in gas or liquids to avoid being empty. The
theory was widely accepted for a long time and supported by Galileo Galilei [citation

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needed]. His pupil Evangelista Torricelli stated in 1644 that the level of mercury in a
closed tube was dependent on the pressure of surrounding air. In 1647 Blaise Pascal
proved this notion in his famous vide dans le vide (“emptiness in emptiness”)
experiment.
The Magdeburg Hemispheres used by Otto von Guericke in 1650 were seen
by some as proof that Aristotle's theory was not correct (see more on this topic in
history of thermodynamics).
For a scholarly discussion Leviathan and the Air-Pump, by Shapin and
Schaffer 1985, is particularly instructive in the 17th century debate between Hobbes,
supporting the plenum, and Boyle's experimental demonstration of the vacuum.

In visual art, horror vacui (literally: fear of empty spaces, perhaps represented
by white spaces, also known as cenophobia) is the filling of the entire surface of an
artwork with detail.
Who is speaking? Who am I referring to? Who is to adress in saying good
bye, in embracing absence? Who bids farewell to fellow artist Vladimir Vetrov, the
Vertov of valediction?
Bonjour Farewell (waives).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farewell_Dossier

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 Well, thank you. Thank you for your dedication, for your vision, for your life.
I think we all must dare, as artists do, to break free of the past and to create a better
future, rooted in values that never change. That`s the great lesson our artists teach us.
I want to say again to our guests how very, very much we enjoy having all of
you here for this celebration and tribute and recognition and absolute delight in artists
who represent not only the best of the arts, but truly the very best that comes from
within the spirit of science.

/Artist
All known human societies establish social order by punishing cheaters and
norm violators. In recent years, neuroeconomists have discovered important
components of the neural circuitry underlying human norm obedience and norm
enforcement. The lecture will document that the prefrontal cortex - a brain area
particularly well developed in humans - is key in this human ability. Non-invasive
down-regulation of neural activity in prefrontal cortex reduces norm compliance despite
the fact that individuals are still able to distinguish between "right" and "wrong".
Neuroeconomic research on young children - whose prefrontal cortex is not yet well
developed - shows similar patterns. These results thus indicate a dissociation between
the ability to obey social norms and the knowledge of the content of the social norms,
which complicates the attribution of responsibility for norm violations.
Ernst Fehr, "The Neuroeconomics of Social Norm Compliance"
http://www.neuroeconomics.nyu.edu/papers/FehrPoster.pdf

That´s all, really.

Nothing goes. Anything will went.

Thanks again to everyone and especially to our wonderful pianist.

Thank you, and good night.
Exit.

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Source :
„Official Welcome“ is a monologue of Andea Fraser that was commissioned by The
MICA Foundation and first performed during a reception at the home of Barbara
Morse, the president of the Foundation, and her husband, Howard Morse, on
November 28, 2001, before an audience of invited guests. The script was first published
in the MICA Foundation Newsletter 1, no. 2 (Fall 2001).
http://performativekunst.akbild.ac.at/Portal/texte/official-welcome-andrea-fraser

All the pictures CC BY-NC 3.0 by Herwig Kopp, unless indicated differently.

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