E.P.I.

Basic Researchs II : Action and event theory and performance in everyday life, social constructions and deconstructions

The "Paradise" sculpture is a complex, self transforming research project, an artwork.

The work began in 1980. This photographic diary of a work table was at the time one design among others for table situations, table sculptures and projects with the table as the center of various meetings, such as "Das Konzil" (The Consulate), initiated by Boris Nieslony in 1981 or for example with the table as the trace of inscribed drawing or an object stand.

In 1984 Nieslony ended the diary. He began to add modules to the basic table, transform it into a sculpture and he developed the photographic section of the documentation, thousands of slides and B/W negatives, separately as its own artistic observation.

In 1986 this studio-situation had its debut exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Duesseldorf (Duesseldorf Museum of Art). It was sculptured to the space and titled: "Paradise" a journey through sculptural and photographic worlds. In 1988 "Paradise" received the "Foerderpreis der deutschen Industrie" (German Industrial Promotion Prize).

Following the theoretical, sculptural and visual observations of everyday life, the sculpture rises up out of the table and reaches out into space as an installation. Mostly these installations are directly tailored to their place of presentation (church rooms, museums, galleries, industrial spaces, etc.). They are installed with material matter found on location, the matter that collects over the years bearing its observations and momentary meanings with it. Visibly the installations are therefore only fragments. Even as an installation in itself it remains only an excerpt from the possible. In the words of the early romantic physicist J.W. Ritter: If this is what false is, how should the truth then be?

Parallel to this, Boris Nieslony's theoretical observations label "Paradise" as the laboratory of seeing, of view. Parallels are drawn to the functions of the brain and its networks and structures; to those of the computer; to the theories of layering between symbol and material and between material and form; to the gravitation of the picture and concept; to far and near; to the integrity of the object; to warm and cold and to seeing as the corporal effect of approaching the picture of the concept which according to Nieslony's definition can never be reached though always present. The process of the sculpture, the installation, clearly shows the substance of a world view, where the infinity of possibilities becomes never tiring seeing. Not being able to see enough is an often heard comment from viewers of "Paradise".

The "Alice" project is best characterized through the text of an associate.
(Nicolas Perthes in "Zeitwahrnehmung und Zeitbewusstsein" (Time Awareness and Time Consciousness))
"The history of the project's development says just about everything about its basic destructive tendency: the object itself, the passages, which Benjamin always labels as transitory and temporary constructions, doing without a unified work plan in the various exposés and finally the imminent destruction of concept in a broken up chapter of Baudelaire and its continued reduction. All of these things show how much the Passagenprojekt (Passages project) has from the beginning been a "Truemmer- oder Katastrophenstaette" (rubble- or catastrophe area). That Benjamin does not want to say something but rather show it is directly connected to the passion play rule of speechlessness: a verbalization of the story would be an unsounded, semiotic communication. In place of this, Benjamin sets the sheer presentation of the material. In doing without the synthesis this presentation copies the disposition of the archive that documented the interminable material historiography. Benjamin's procedure comes close to being an anticipation of the analytical discourse functionalisation of Foucault's archive concept: instead of seeing how the words are lined up in rows, in the great mythical book of history, which transform previous and elsewhere formed thoughts into visible signs, .there are systems within the thick of the discursive practice that introduce statements as events (which have their conditions and venues) and things (which include their fields of possible use). I suggest that all of these statement systems be called archives. Foucault's genealogical archeology collects the archive data without using hierarchy, previous selection or interpretation. Accordingly Benjamin also documents the integration of the discourse of architecture, social history, economy and aesthetics. The convolutions of the Passagenprojekt present an order of knowledge in the serial notation of excerpts "which allows chance, discontinuity and materiality to be admitted to the root of thought."
The Passagenprojekt presents the nineteenth century as text instead of producing text about it. Benjamin's Passagenprojekt is also a constellation of discourse and quotations not their unification into a discourse. Benjamin's statement series' are more radically composed than with Foucault. Where Foucault understands the discourse as "a multitude of verbal performances" and the "law" of such a series, Benjamin is solely interested in the fact that the statement turns up in the archive. He leaves the law of its chaining unnoticed. Furthermore, the destructive gesture in the historical presentation serves to cancel out all regular forms of chaining in order to make room for any current relationships beyond such explicitness.
The destructive poetic of the historiography becomes a "library fantasy". Benjamin put colored seals onto his excerpts from the Bibliothique Nationale and transferred them into alphabetically ordered convolutions. The body of the Passagenprojekt text is thus structured as an archive. His encyclopedic collection corresponds to the presentation of the complete discourse of an epic.

For the world is not human simply because it is manmade.
It will not even become human at the sound of a human voice
within it until it becomes the topic of conversation.

Sculpture (Hardware) - Software (Philosophical Terminal) - Performance, Action (Effect)

As a sculpture it consists of a day side and a night side in the form of a cabinet standing on casters. Closed it represents a hermetic box that can be unfolded, opened up (4 base towers and 8 wings), and has the character of a double shrine.

As a sculpture of the night side, the front, it houses the matter of an essential question: What is a picture? How do I open a picture? This question has presented itself in the practice of art, in works, reflections, collections and ordering systems since 1969. There are investigations into: diaries, scissor cuts, painting, color, collage versus montage, photography, copy-art (including a history of copy-art in the development of technology and machines), artist books, objects, found objects, documentation, installation and forms arising out of the exchange of influences and intermedial transitions of these investigations.

The investigation of performance developed into its own sculpture "Die Schwarze Lade" (The Black Box) which is now a performance art archive "Perforum" in the Charles and Agnes Foegele Foundation in Pfaeffikon, Switzerland. The investigations also developed a field of research, "Context in Performance and Performing Art", which is discussed in detail elsewhere.

As a sculpture of the day side, the back, it consists of a collection of material that does not primarily follow any artistic expression but rather reflections and analysis which are prescientific (Wunderkammer (wonder chamber)) and scientific (ethnology, anthropology, linguistics and art science). The material is thousands of newspaper photographs, texts and books (influential books, thematically selected books and those arranged according to theme complexes). The ordering systems include: collections, groups, encyclopedias, structural reflections and the total view, the contextualization.

Each level, shelf unit, can be separated from the sculpture and developed as a temporary presentation (daily, weekly, etc), as an exhibition, installation, lecture, performance,etc. after a presentation the material can be refolded up again and stored, sedimented into the sculpture.

"However, who is that on your other side?"

The Anthropognostic Tableware is understood as software for the agency "ASA-Art Service Association" and its projects, "The Gift", "Rent an Artist" and the projects stemming from them primarily in performance art.

The idea of the software is to make everything available in one provided "ability", the gift itself: to view things and life forms, the people and the situations each time as though it were the very first time. It was expressed most exactly by the Fluxus artist George Brecht, "If you want to know something spend your time with someone who knows something." In this vein ASA developed its activities, the "service" and the "philosophical terminals".

The "philosophical terminal" is what I call the body that can be formed as I have been forming it since 1980 through concepts, pictures, objects, sculptures and activities. The body is made of prefigurations (coordinates of the meetings). These concepts, pictures, elements, etc experience the effects and changes of the body (phil. term.). They enter relationships, build forms o galvanized chains, concept chains, compress themselves into batteries, into energy, build collectors or join into spatial unions. All in order to be made public at a certain point of energy. The elements in the sculpture are unfolded for this event. They show themselves in order to be refolded as the portrayal of a body of pure energy. Analogous to communicating tubes, the concepts, pictures, objects and actions flow into the philosophical terminal.

All of these qualities are formed out of practice and theory of performance (performance art). They are borrowed from "everyday action" and developed in studies of the "philosophical terminals". These qualities represent the productions, presentations, events and meetings of about 20 years work.

Such qualities along with network-specific ones, are also the basis of the networks launched through ASA European.

The collection of material and its analysis require a more encompassing broader work base to start from. In the intrinsic process of performance, in the activities of ASA European, the network, and in the interaction of various international networks, this need led to the idea and naturally to the foundation of the "E.P.I. Center".