never odd or even ebook

01nome

01.10>20.11, 2011 13.01>08.04, 2012

02 never odd or even 03nome

Mariana Castillo Deball Never odd or even, Book, 2011 Tangram Table(photo by Laura Gianetti)

never odd or even nome

Exhibition

Artistsrosa barba

erik beltrán

nanna Debois buhl & brenDan FernanDes

Mariana Castillo Deball

siMon evans

Peter FisChli | DaviD Weiss

János FoDor

lise harlev

FerDinanD kriWetJán ManCuška

tris vonna-MitChell

CiPrian Muresan

henrik olesen

aDaM PenDleton

Pablo PiJnaPPel

sebastián roMo

DMitry vilensky (Chto Delat?)PhilliP ZaCh

CuratorsolveJ helWeg ovesen

Director GrimmuseumenriCo CentonZe

Assistant Curator, Gr immuseumMario Margani

Exhibi t ion Coordinator at Solvej ovesen Curator ial Projects for Grimmuseum and Museum of Contemporary Art , Roski lde: Mette Woller

Documentat ion, photolaura gianetti WWW.lauragianetti.CoM

Director Museum of Contemporary Art Roski ldesanne koFoD olsen

Assistant Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art , Roski ldeMette truberg technical Director, Museum of Contemporary Art , Roski ldeenriCo Passetti

E-book

PublishersolveJ helWeg ovesen

Concept e-bookanDrea niColò, solveJ helWeg ovesen

Graphic designanDrea niColò

WWW.anDreaniColo.CoM

Documentat ion, photolaura gianetti

Documentat ion, f i lm never odd or even performanceChristoPher heWitt

Documentat ion, f i lm Machine Vision Seekers hagen DöCke

PrefaceenriCo CentonZe, sanne koFoD olsen

Authors , in terviews: Mariana Castillo Deball, János FoDor, Mario Margani, solveJ helWeg ovesen, Pablo PiJnaPPel & Mette Woller EditorsolveJ helWeg ovesen

Assist ing edi torMette Woller English language proof readingCarrie haMPel

Distr ibut ionGrimmuseumwww.grimmuseum.com

Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde www.samtidskunst.dk

Solvej Ovesen Curatorial Projects www.solvejovesen.com

ContactGrimmuseum: Fichtestrasse 2, 10967 Berlin – DEwww.grimmuseum.com

Museum of Contemporary Art: Stændertorvet 1, 4000 Roskilde – DK www.samtidskunst.dk

Solvej Helweg Ovesen, Atelier Werk, Schwedterstrasse 36A, 10435 Berlin - DE [email protected]

inDEx

06-07PrefaceText by Enrico Centonze,

Sanne Kofod Olsen

09-012 Never odd or even — an introductionText by Solvej Helweg Ovesen

014-027PhotosViDEo 021Machine Vision Seeker

029-069Mariana Castillo Deball,Solvej Helweg Ovesen— The Exhibition Never odd or evenInterview by Mette Woller

ViDEo 055Ingo Niermann's Performance

071-081Pablo Pijnappel— Quirijn 2011Interview by Mette Woller

083-096János Fodor — a written conversationInterview by Mario Margani

097-103Artists

never odd or even nome

Never odd or even curated by Solvej helweg ovesen is an exhibition

that reflects the goals of the Grimmuseum.

histories unfold to build an expanded meaning, in which sense the

museum is like a book containing many stories, ideas and mediums; all artists

and curators working with us are co-authors of our identity. Grimmuseum fo-

cuses on an interdisciplinary approach of promoting performance, sound, and

visual art, much like the profile of Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde.

A co-production with the Museum of Contemporary Art made this

exhibition project and the publishing of the ii Volume of never odd or even

possible, an experience that has allowed two institutions to share the joy of

language and text in interdisciplinary approaches.

the co-existence of viewers, artists and artworks generates a univer-

sal space for individual reflection. in many ways the exhibition is interactive,

in which way Grimmuseum invites its viewers to co-author their own per-

spective of our collective history.

berlin, January 2012

Enrico Centonze

Founder and Director of Grimmuseum

It is our great pleasure to host the exhibition never odd or even at the Mu-

seum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde this Winter, 2012.

the exhibition never odd or even is a collaboration between freelance

curator Solvej helweg ovesen, the Grimmuseum in berlin, and the Museum of

Contemporary Art in Roskilde.

in 2010 Solvej helweg ovesen approached me with the suggestion of

co-producing this exhibition with the Grimmuseum in berlin. it seemed an

obvious thing to do considering the similar orientation of the Museum of Con-

temporary Art and the Grimmuseum in our common focus on conceptual prac-

tices, performance and sound art.

however, what i found most intriguing was the concept of the exhibi-

tion, and most particularly the collaboration between curator and artist: cura-

tor Solvej helweg ovesen has borrowed the exhibition title from a pre-existing

work of art from Mariana Castillo Deball, which is also a significant and signify-

ing part of the exhibition. in some ways, this work —the book by Mariana Cas-

tillo Deball— is a passage to the process of the exhibition, while it’s concept

also unfolds the curatorial concept. the exhibition is both an invitation to the

viewer to write a story through the narrative of their experience of the exhi-

bition, and in the same way, to participate in the art works as written stories

themselves. Everything has a story.

Finally, i would like to extend my thanks to Solvej helweg ovesen for in-

cluding the Museum of Contemporary Art in this exciting collaboration, to Mari-

ana Castillo Deball for offering to produce volume ii of the never odd or even

book, to all the participating artists, as well as Enrico Centonze from the Grimmu-

seum, and to all co-workers who have contributed to this exhibition production.

Roskilde, January 2012

Sanne kofod olsen,

Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde


Never odd or even— an introduction

Text bySolvej Helweg Ovesensebastián roMo

Limite! (det.) 2004 (photo by Laura Gianetti)

010 never odd or even 011solvej helweg ovesen

The Never odd or even e-book has been published on

the occasion of the exhibition Never odd or even that

took place in Berlin Grimmuseum from the 1st of Oc-

tober till the 20th of November, 2011, and will now take place in

the Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde from the 14th of Janu-

ary till the 8th of April, 2012. For these wonderful opportunities to

present the exhibition I would like to extend a heartfelt thank-you

to the participating artists, especially Mariana Castillo Deball, who

inspired the exhibition title with her artwork Never odd or even,

and to the museum directors, Enrico Centonze and Sanne Kofod,

as well as their teams, thanks to whom the exhibition and the new

Volume of Never odd or even by Deball could be printed and co-

produced. This exciting collaboration between two institutions in

Berlin and Roskilde, both so passionately committed to present-

ing and documenting sound art, performance and conceptual art,

have been valuable supporting structures for this exhibition and in

the idea of inspiring visitors ‘to becoming the exhibition’s devoted

readers’.

Never odd or even is a text-spaced exhibition that unfolds

in mental and architectural chapters through perspectives created

by textual artworks. The artworks presented derive from Concrete

Poetry, Dadaist and Futurist Manifestos, as well as techniques of

mind mapping. The exhibition structure is inspired by the format

of a book or perhaps more specifically a ‘walk-in’ anthology on

a human-scale, formatted in spatial chapters that, in effect, invite

the visitors to become co-authors, as their imaginations co-produce

stories by filling in both the gaps left open by the artists and in the

spaces between their works. Imaginary space is rendered tangible

through text and movement. Artworks appear as wall texts and text

installations, as well as projected, spoken, enacted and filmed prose

in a way that activates the architectural space to amplify the mean-

ing of the words and the worlds inside them.

The point of departure of the exhibition and it’s title come

from the legendary book and performance project, Never odd or

even, 2005 - 2011, by Berlin-based artist, Mariana Castillo De-

ball (Mexico, 1975). Her project consists of ‘a book of unwritten

books’—30 book covers designed by creative producers selected by

the artist and published as one book. A new edition of the Never

odd or even book has been invented and published for this exhibi-

tion (by Bom dia boa tarde boa noite). The imagined content of

these ‘unwritten books’ was and will be performed during the ex-

hibition by well-known authors, poets, and artists like Ingo Nier-

mann, Cia Rinne, and Jens Blendstrup.

The present Never odd or even e-book evokes and explores

the celebration of the precision of language and expression, reading,

the historical transformation of images to signs and alphabets, and

words to images in the exhibited artworks. Never odd or even is a

slow exhibition with manifold performative elements —clearly best

documented with a combination of photos, text and video, which

is of course what makes the format of an e-book so inviting. The

book presents a comprehensive interview with myself and Mariana


Castillo Deball by Mette Woller contextualising the Never odd or

even exhibition and originating artwork, as well as the Never odd

or even performance video documentation in which Ingo Niermann

reads from the Ronald Reagan biography: Where is the rest of me?

Furthermore Mette Woller interviewed Pablo Pijnappel, a most ar-

ticulate author and filmmaker, whose film Quirijn appears in the

exhibition, and who here investigates the pleasures of laziness, and

defying the daily pressure to perform. Finally the book presents

a written conversation between Mario Margani and participating

artist János Fodor about his sci-fi archaeology of alphabets as it ap-

pears in his sculptures and visuals.

FerDinanD KRiWEtRundscheiben (det.)

1960-63Offset print, 10 parts

Each 60,9 x 588,4 x 1,3 cm

Edition of 30Courtesy BQ Galerie,

Berlin(photo by Laura Gianetti)

never odd or even 015nome

sebastián roMoLimite!

2004Museum board

Variable dimensions(photo by Laura Gianetti)

henrik olesen

Portraits/Alphabet (version)2008/2011

8 digital prints on paper each 29,7 x 21 cm

Courtesy Daniel Buchholz, Köln/Berlin

(photo by Laura Gianetti)


How To Work Better1991-2000Screenprint on paper69,8 x 49,8 cm (unframed)Private collectionCourtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin/London, Matthew Marks Gallery New York, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich.(photo by Laura Gianetti)

never odd or even 017nome

siMon evans

Symptoms of Loneliness 2009

Pen, paper, scotch tape, correction fluid72 x 99 cm

Copyright the artistPrivate collection, São Paulo


aDaM PenDleton

Black Dada2008

Vinyl foilVariable dimensions

(photo by Laura Gianetti)016

018 never odd or even 019never odd or even

Ján ManCuška

In Memory, 2006(10 x 10 x 10 of reality 6/10)

10 xerox copies, framed individually

Each 29 x 21cmCourtesy Meyer Riegger,

Berlin/Karlsruhe(photo by Laura Gianetti)

DMitry vilensky (Chto Delat?)Century of the Manifesto.

Play for a few actors2009

video 8:03 min.

Music by Mikhail Krutik(photo by Laura Gianetti)

János FoDorMonolith (All These Worlds Are Yours Except Europa, Attempt No Landing Here, Use Them Together Use Them In Peace)2011Black plexiglasCourtesy Kisterem Gallery, Budapest(photo by Laura Gianetti)

020 never odd or even 021never odd or even

rosa barba Machine Vision Seekers

200416 mm film, colour, moving projector

6’ 45’’edition of 1/3 + 1 a.p

Courtesy of the Artistand carlier | gebauer, Berlin

and Gió Marconi, Milan(video by hagen döcke)

rosa barba Machine Vision Seekers200416 mm film, colour, moving projector6’ 45’’edition of 1/3 + 1 a.pCourtesy carlier | gebauer, Berlin and Gió Marconi, Milan(photo by Laura Gianetti)

eriCk beltrán Die Morelli Zeitzeile

2009Print on foil


023never odd or evennever odd or even022

nanna Debois buhl & brenDan FernanDes In Your Words2011HD Video projection 10’ 27’’ loopAnimations: Hisao IharoSound: Pejk MalinovskiVoices: Karen Blixen, Nanna Debois Buhl,Brendan Fernandes, Irungu Mutu(photo by Laura Gianetti)

FerDinanD KRiWEtRundscheiben1960-63Offset print, 10 parts Each 60,9 x 588,4 x 1,3 cmEdition of 30Courtesy BQ Galerie, Berlin(photo by Laura Gianetti)

025024 never odd or evennever odd or even

026 027never odd or evennever odd or even

lisa harlev

Dear Hairdresser (det.)2009Plexiglass, woodDimensions variable (photo by Laura Gianetti)

PhilliP ZaCh

Untitled (det.)2011Vinyl foilVariable dimensions(photo by Laura Gianetti)

CiPrian Muresan

Dog Luv2009Video30’ 56’’Courtesy Galeria Plan B, Berlin/Cluj


Mariana Castillo Deball,Solvej HelwegOvesen— The Exhibition Never odd or even

Interview byMette WollerMariana Castillo Deball

Never odd or even, Book, 2011 (photo © BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE and Manuel Goller)

030 031mariana castillo deball - solvej helweg ovesen

Solvej, the exhibition Never odd or even is inspired by Mariana

Castillo Deball’s book and performance project Never odd or even.

When did you see it the first time and in which ways did it inspire

you? in other words, what potential did you see in the project?

I saw it at her presentation for the 9th Baltic Triennial, BMW

(Black Market Worlds), not as a book, but as posters presented

on freestanding walls. Never odd or even then became the title

of the book project in its current form, which was developed

between 2004 and 2006 and published by Revolver. The po-

tential I saw was in the act of giving a kind of imaginary space

to other people by inviting them to make a cover of a not yet

existing book. The title Never odd or even has a mystical energy from having the reverse read-ing effect of a palindrome and because of the ‘in-between’ zone it describes. I think the authors

who get invited to make contributions and covers of these im-

aginary books almost get some of that energy: they suggest, or

take on other stories and they most likely give completely dif-

ferent input than if they’d written a whole book. I think that’s

my main inspiration as well — the possibility or idea of putting

your own ‘author’ ego aside and being anonymous by either

conceiving a book cover for another author, or writing the text

of a book with a title you didn’t invent yourself.

Mariana, how did you come up with the title: Never odd

or even?

Never odd or even is, as said, a palindrome, a sentence

whose letters can be read both forwards and backwards.

The project consists of a compilation of 30 covers of non-

existing books for which content is created or imagined

through a series of performances. I thought the title Never

odd or even was a precise metaphor for a process that goes

back and forth. As a publication composed of non-exist-

ing books, it triggers the reader’s imagination, inviting him

or her to lucubrate on its possible contents. In that sense

Never odd or even is always incomplete and needs a dia-

logue in order to exist.

is this a way to place it in-between definitions?

For me, it is important to focus on the trajectories of the dia-

logue between people rather than seeing it as a product in itself.

Mariana Castillo Deball Never odd or even, Book, 2011 (photo © BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE and Manuel Goller) mette woller mariana castillo deball solvej helweg ovesen

032 never odd or even 033mariana castillo deball - solvej helweg ovesen

Solvej, is what Mariana is saying here related to the choice

of using the title for the entire exhibition?

I think it’s the idea of a book in a book in a book that is crucial,

similar to the idea of ‘mise en abyme’, this kind of endlessness

of the project; I mean, it’s infinity. Visually I connected it to

the space of Grimmuseum, where one goes deeper and deeper

into the space with a view of one door opening after the other.

I should also mention that Never odd or even is conceived as

a slow exhibition. Almost like a small bookstore where you

rediscover the joy of reading. The title is also inspired of a kind

of freedom of not having to relate all the artworks directly, but

being able to give each of them their own chapter. The authors

who enact one of the book covers from Marianas’project Nev-

er odd or even can choose any cover and then put a story to it

from their imagination, which they present to an audience who

is totally unprepared. I hope that the audience in the exhibi-

tion gets into a kind of reading/listening mode from where the

stories can gain space. What I really love about the connection

between the book project and the exhibition is that, in a way, it

allows the exhibition to host quite different stories next to each

other, and that the artists offer a whole story so that each visi-

tor can decide if they dive completely into that one piece exclu-

sively and spend ages on it, or if they dive into all of them.

In terms of curating I don’t think an exhibition always has

to support the same narrative. It can be an endless book that

might meet further down the interpretive strands, and in that

way inspires the chapters of the exhibition.

sebastián roMo Limite! (det.) 2004 Installation view Grimmuseum



So in which way are the different stories connected within

the exhibition ?

It’s a ‘text-spaced exhibition’, which means the

artworks are connected through the archaic human desire of

expression in verbal and phenomenological forms. It is an exhibition about the joy of expressing the hu-man inner world to the outer in a precise, not necessarily efficient, but eloquent way.

Can you elaborate this a little more? is it, despite the dif-

ferent stories within the exhibition, still possible to talk about an

overall narrative?

The narrative is connected to a feeling and related to the way

Mariana conceived of the Never odd or even project. The ex-

hibition hosts many chapters about mental states and percep-

tions that are are neither odd nor even and express these psy-

chological nuances, stories and little secrets. If you take the

chapter or work, Limite! by Sebastían Romo, you dive into

a subjective portrait of Mexico city originally gathered after

he came back from a year aboard. He collected a lot of adjec-

tives and words describing the city from different people and

put them in a sculptural, three-dimensional crossword. It is

like a verbal trajectory of Situationist derivés where people

wandered through a city in a spontaneous way and thus re-

discovered it. Romo asked people about adjectives describing

Mexico City and placed them on a table that sometimes makes

sense and sometimes doesn’t — so in a way, it is like a ‘pop’

impression of Mexico City, but still shows the complexity of

emotions and ideas of the city at a certain moment.

is the work by Sebastían Romo then a very literal way of

understanding the text-spaced part of the exhibition?

In a way it is an opener. For example, János Fodor’s work is

a more complex body of work about the alphabet, the an-

thropological role of signsand how letters originally come

from images, to become images again in different ways —

for example in advertising and art. Disk is a painting about

the Greek Phaistos Disc from 2nd millennium BC contain-

ing about 45 un-decodable and unique signs that might be

one of the first alphabets, but researchers can’t break the

code to find out what the signs on the discs mean. The signs

look like images of, for example: a fish, but in the moment

sebastián roMo Limite! (det.) 2004 (photo by Laura Gianetti)


they become some abstract letters, they reveal an impor-

tant anthropological transformation, which is what inter-

ests Fodor. The exhibition recalls how different linguistic codes come out of signs that come from images like in Concrete Poetry, where the surface becomes the main playground of the typography, which becomes an im-age and then the individual letter becomes something that we as human beings see as representing a sound.

And you also included works from the Concrete Poetry

tradition in the 1960s…

Ferdinand KRIWET is represented with 10 works that are

called Rundscheiben, which means ‘roundels’ — boards with

words spiralling into the centre made between 1960-63. They

are from a moment when he, as well as many other Concrete-

as well as Visual- Poetry artists from all around the world,

left the idea of having to create a narrative behind. He gave

up semantic responsibility as an author and began presenting

text in typographic streams or verbal disorder that implied

a kind of ‘Dadaistic lack’ of adherence to societal conven-

tions. The visual part presented sounds in the way they are

performed — such as absurd noises, conscious stuttering,

animal sounds repeated incessantly, or just taking intonations

to an extreme in a way — mimicking the way that society,

economy, machines, passing time, and human alienation from

nature, program our life and language. There is a surrealistic

element in the Rundscheiben, they are definitely dizzying to

read and they don’t focus at all on semantic structure, instead

describing the ‘nonsense’ of things he had to do, like travel-

ling around to German provinces as an artist.

How is the exhibition related to your curatorial practice in

general? You once told me that it’s important for you that the ex-

hibition performs itself; can you explain what you mean by that?

I would like an exhibition to perform itself instead of merely illustrating a theme, which means that it should invite exactly those ac-tions from artist and viewers, that it means to reflect, in this case, the joy of language and text.

FerDinanD KRiWEt Rundscheiben 1960-63 Offset print, 10 parts Each 60,9 x 58 8,4 x 1,3 cm Edition of 30 Courtesy BQ Galerie, Berlin (photo by Laura Gianetti)


Other exhibitions, I curated to perform danger or become

dangerous as in Quicksand at De Appel, Amsterdam 2004, or

to make the viewer consider a life strategy instead of merely a

lifestyle as in Life Policies in ZDB, Lisbon 2002, and finally to

perform a radical turn on an art scene to open its’ eyes to other

kinds of art, geographically, as in U-TURN Quadrennial for

Contemporary Art, Copenhagen 2008. For this exhibition to

be successful it should make people forget that they are read-

ing at all – that would be the optimal indirect performance of

the show, or rather, the outcome that the show provokes. The

subtitle of the exhibition is a “text-spaced exhibition”, as I men-

tioned before. This means that you are invited to go completely

into the text as expression, to space-out in it if you like, even

physically. It also means that the combination of space and text

meets your emotions and senses or activates them in a way to go

deeper into the matter. The visual and the aesthetic aspects of the

texts are very important, and in a way —though I did not for-

mulate this in any press release — I was really interested in the

transformation of the viewer into a reader and the suggestion of

a reading mood and mode. I was thinking a lot about how you

can create different experiences of depth in exhibitions, which

is connected with time and connected with human stories that

are somehow psychological. So, for example, Henrik Olesen’s

work in the exhibition, Portraits/Alphabet, is for him about

examining different concepts of the body and the attempts to

control it via language ‘machines’, and he presents them almost

like a deconstructive sound art work. With Simon Evan's work

Symptoms of Loneliness it’s about getting a psychological state

out on paper like a mind-map, and Pablo Pijnappel’s film is a

biography, where a central protagonist Quirijn, after whom the

work is titled, has decided not to work and perform in his life, in

the sense of a typical everyday way, as we understand perform-

ance by having to deliver something. Pijnappel makes a very calm portrait of Berlin as a city, but also of this guy. For me it is a statement against hav-ing to perform in a special way that particularly neo-liberalism requires you to do. The whole text

part of that work is the artist’s imagination of what’s going on

in the mind of someone who doesn’t want to perform; who has

a more elaborate, maybe philosophical approach to life. So the works are quite different, but they create some-

henrik olesen Portraits/Alphabet (version) (det.) 2008/2011 (photo by Laura Gianetti)


thing like a value of slowness. They are earnest and

precise in their formulation and expression.

is this based on a desire to create a ‘breathing hole’ or ‘hole

of escapism’ within the world?

In this case, yes, indeed — but I can also appreciate a vio-

lent exhibition or a fast exhibition, which I have also cu-

rated, but it’s more that the exhibition performs or invites

a certain performance that could be spiritually, socially

or intellectually relevant. I do think quite a lot about the

viewer in that sense. I don’t know if I’m always successful,

and in the end it’s always about the artworks and whether

they are interesting.

You also once told me that you do not want exhibition

themes to be merely illustrative. What do you mean by that?

I always wanted exhibitions to do what they claim to be. My

point is about this very used word: performative. I definitely

respect artists and audience very much, and I think the mo-

ment that the audience feel they are co-creating a show in-

stead of just reading it, they are definitely much more engaged

in the content, which isn’t something that always happens.

In this sense, the installation setting and the way the invi-

tation to the viewer is made, are both really important. In order to be the lungs of the city, an exhibition needs to be an atmospheric place for for ex-ample contemplation, and here the way com-plex matters attain physical representation is what makes the difference between whether the audience is actually absorbed, or just run-ning through.

Have you done exhibitions before that are based on or in-

spired by an artist’s work?

Not directly as such, although every day I keep trying to per-

ceive what is happening in the world through art. But I’m deep-

ly fascinated by your, Mariana, interest in history, in creating

mental and cultural genealogies and exploring other people’s

minds. It’s a deeply personal thing to suggest a book cover and

being able to do it anonymously even makes it more personal

in a way. It means that you can suggest whatever you’re won-

siMon evans, Symptoms of Loneliness, 2009, Pen, paper, scotch tape, correction fluid72 x 99 cm Copyright the artist Private collection, São Paulo (photo by Laura Gianetti)


dering about and put it out there for someone else to write —

imagine if you asked everybody on earth, how many of them

would have ideas for books? The Never odd or even book

covers aren’t about the topics you usually find on the shelf.

You properly wouldn’t get such imaginative or crazy ideas for

books, if you emphasized the value of authorship instead of

the extravagant pleasure of anonymously generating the idea

of a subject for a book without having to write it.

Mariana, how has your love of books informed your prac-

tice specifically?

For many years I have been very influenced by literature, and

especially the group Oulipo (Workshop for Potential Lit-

erature) who are mathematicians and writers, exploring the

possibilities of incorporating mathematical structures in liter-

ary works. Each piece is generated from a constraint, which

means a rule, method, procedure, or structure. So within these

constrictions there are certain rules that modify language and

result in crazy experiments, for example Georges Perec wrote

the novel La Disparition, without the letter E. Some of the

rules created by Oulipo are very difficult to pursue, so hard in

fact, that the author’s intentions disappear, becoming a writ-

ing apparatus driven by language. I was really interested in

this group when I started working on the Never odd or even

project, which is also based on a constraint: to invite a group

of writers, artists and intellectuals to create the cover of a book

that doesn’t exist.

Polish science fiction writer, Stanislaw Lem, also influenced

the project. His book A Perfect Vacuum consists of a compi-

lation of introductions and prologues of non-existing books.

Most of the time we describe books that are impossible to

write, because they are infinite, too ambitious, invisible, or

written by a machine. They are impossible tasks that I find re-

ally interesting: describing a work of literature made by some-

one who doesn’t exist or made in an impossible manner. So

in that sense the project Never odd or even started as an idea

to invite people to contribute with stories that are, in many

ways, unfinished, impossible or absurd. Within this invitation

I think people submit things they otherwise would never have

submitted, because they are anthropologists, writers or schol-

ars who usually deliver a complete novel, a paper, or a body

of work, but in this case it’s something very brief and concise,

where often contributors invent an alter ego, erasing their own

name. In this way they can take all the risks they want.

And why do you think that the authors are inspired to do

works they wouldn’t normally do?

Well, I think it has to do with the sort of economy we live

in nowadays, especially in the creative world, where you are

constantly producing ideas and proposals that so often never

see the light of day. Many people I know, includ-ing anthropologists, historians, writers and scientists, have many projects they will never finish, because the economy is based on the


constant delivery of proposals, and from all these proposals they are maybe able to bring one or two to an end product, and often the final result is not what you actually imagined anyway. In my own experience, I’m often in love or attached to certain ideas that never happened, because they have freshness due to their in-existence. I think that many disciplines can

identify with this project, because you can just present it as

an invitation, and at the same time it looks like an existing

book, but actually it isn’t, it is just a dust jacket.

What interests you about working with people from dif-

ferent disciplines?

I think it started when I was in High school. I was going

to study either mathematics, philosophy or art. I had a very

good mathematics teacher, who said to me “you need to study

mathematics, because it’s the only way you will learn how

to think. If you study philosophy, you will receive plenty of

knowledge, but you will not be able to make something out of

it. If you study art, you are just going to get lost in inventing

things, which are absurd and useless. But if you study math-

ematics you will learn to build systems of thought, which can

be applied to other disciplines and ways of thinking”. In the

end I didn’t study mathematics, I studied art and I chose to

study art because it was the only way I could bring together

all the things I like. In that sense art is a very generous pro-

fession, because you can bring things in from many different

fields and still be an artist. If I had studied mathematics and

started working with a historian they would say “hey come

on, this is not really your job, you’re straying off the track.

Come back to us.” With art I can work with different meth-

odologies and bring them together.

And how did you get to know so many authors, designers

and playwrights etc.?

In the new volume of the Never odd or even book, I invited

many writers I admired and read books of, but didn’t know

personally. And I often work with people from different dis-

ciplines who I collaborate with on a regular basis on diverse

projects. It was a funny activity with the Never odd or even

project because they were invited to do a cover of a non-

existing book and had so many ideas. Most of the people I

invited said: “yeah, but I have so many things I’d like to do. I

can’t choose.” As I said, there are many unfinished stories.

You once said: ”i am a bit like the person who hands out

flyers in the street, to repair your fridge or other stuff. i just

distribute”. is Never odd or even about appropriated authorship

or about letting chance play a role in your artistic oeuvre, or

is it for you more a social thing involving different people in

different parts of the process, so that we speak more of a social

sculpture that’s already been going on for years?

The project is an experiment in collaboration in that sense.

046 never odd or even 047nomeMariana Castillo Deball Never odd or even, Book, 2011 (photo © BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE and Manuel Goller)


I was trying to create a situation in which the notions of agency and principal swap from one person to another, resulting in a chain re-action. In this manner each book cover is neither attached

to the patron, nor the author, nor to the reader who imagines

its content. Around each book cover there is a kind of force

field, which is the potential territory of the project. With

Never odd or even the author has agency while doing a book

cover, but at the same time he or she allows other people to

elaborate on it. So I’m interested in this chain of events that

complete a story, because I don’t believe that anyone is able

to produce something on their own. We are always depend-

ing on others, on the world, on what we eat, on where we are

and it’s a reminder that we are not alone, that we need others,

in order to complete our sentences.

What are the book covers about? And are other topics

and information chosen when the ‘authors’ are able to remain

anonymous?

There is a lot of information hidden in the covers that depends

on the authors that have contributed. They have their own

agendas and their own books that they could never write but

always wanted to. For example, the cover Pour un tombeau

de Martine Roiseux – the author wanted to do a tribute to

someone who was not very well known and who had just

passed away.

And is it okay for you if people don’t get that information?

Some might and some might not….

Each book cover is an invitation.

That’s right. I really like the blue cover with the couple that

meet where both their relatives are part of their body and fig-

ure as ghosts by Alejandro Jodorowsky. There is a lot of nar-

rative; I mean it has a strong psychological content in terms of

how people from your past influence your person and how

they show up again when you are in an intimate relationship.

The cover already performed, “Where is the rest of me?”, is

also very intriguing. It was originally the cover of an autobiog-

raphy by Ronald Reagan and this also provokes some thought

about the relation between fiction and reality. The German au-

thor Ingo Niermann, who presented the book, took his point

of departure from a war film that Ronald Reagan really acted

in, where he woke up from a bad dream after both his legs had

been amputated, asking: “Where is the rest of me?” It was the

author, Niermann, who extended Reagan’s’ biography with his

presumed thoughts of today’s’ issues such as the ‘Occupy Wall

Street’ demonstrations and economic crises. In a way Niermann

imagined what a biography written by a ‘ghost writer’ would

sound like. As for himself, Niermann simultaneously got the

chance to explore his own interest in Phantom Limbs and the

question of what ‘a whole subjectivity or person’ means. The

covers meet the authors’ unconscious or their projects that are,

let say, half a meter outside of the brain.


I think Ingo said it was kind of a blind date. Because you

don’t even know who you’re dealing with, and who actually

wrote the book cover when you decide to work with it.

In terms of introducing the element of chance in writing and jumping topics and chapters, I think of Raymond Roussel, who wrote the novel Impressions of Africa, where he in-vented several writing procedures, or con-straints. His method was like an onion: You have the different rings of an onion and in each ring there is a story and then he could go in and out of this onion throughout the novel, breaking up the linear narrative. It’s completely

crazy, but the idea that you are going into different narrative

fields throughout the book is really interesting. In that sense,

literature is very generous because you have infinite possi-

bilities for creating spaces and going into different language

mechanisms.

When i looked in the book i found myself trying to fig-

ure out which one of the little descriptions on the back cover

matched-up with which of the covers. in some way, i was try-

ing to figure out if there was any kind of system. On my way, i

stumbled across how you have played with some of the titles by

either swapping the words so they get new layers of meaning, or

by turning them into questions. i think it is inherent in human

nature that we try to organise the world in everything we do in

one way or the other. Can you tell us about the special kind of

typography you have developed, the way you have played with

order, and your role as “chapter manager”?

The icons are based on the Chinese game tan-gram, a puzzle that starts from a square com-posed of seven pieces with different shapes. The puzzle can form an infinite number of figurative and abstract icons. For the Never odd or even publication, I wrote an index with a sentence and a tan-gram icon corresponding to each book cover. Augusto Monterroso wrote what claims to be the shortest

short story in the world, which is: “When he woke up the di-

nosaur was still there.” I really like it, because there is so much

in this sentence. In the context of Never odd or even, I made a

‘Reductio ad absurdum’ experiment, first the book’s format is

reduced to its cover, then to a sentence (in other words: a title),

ending up as an icon that I then made on the main cover refer-

ring to the book. The icon I made for each book is a constella-

tion of the tangram shapes I mentioned above from which the

presentation table for the books is also made.

i also realised that you reversed some of the words, like

the title: The Girl from the Farm you reversed to: The Farm from

the Girl.

Ahh, but this was decided by the author of this specific book

cover. So on the front it says The Girl from the Farm, but on


soPhie golZ, ingo niernaMM Never odd or even performance (photo by Laura Gianetti)

ana teixeira Pinto, arManDo anDraDe tuDela Never odd or even performance (photo by Laura Gianetti)

ingo niernaMM Never odd or even performance (video by christopher hewitt)

Mariana Castillo Deball (photo by Laura Gianetti)


the spine it says The Farm from the Girl and on the front the

author is Gertrude Dix, but on spine the author is Aubrey

Beardsley — and the publishing house is TIT FOR TAT.

(Laughs)

You seem to be obsessed with crazy narratives — of chang-

ing the order of things. Can you explain a bit about your inter-

est in narratives?

For me, the construction of narratives is not a simple linear process; it is an epileptic process in which the membranes of the individual and the transit of indigenous and alien elements are continually negotiated. Italo Calvino refers to

this movement when he speaks of the author as a ‘spasmod-

ic machine’ that attempts to reconcile chance and determin-

ism in a single mechanism. This ‘spasmodic machine’ is formed of a system of relationships among things that aspire to become a map – a catalogue

or encyclopaedia of the possible – attempting to liberate itself

from the density of facts and in opposition to them to con-

struct a cognitive tangle, a personal equation.

I talk about estrangement, as I have been thinking about it a lot

lately. The notion of the stranger refers to an individual who

has experienced a process of exclusion and is different from, or

alien to, a particular circumstance. On the other hand, the no-

tion of estrangement recalls a gaze that becomes diluted in an

undifferentiated territory, immersed in a moment in which the

cohesion of the individual disappears.

Estrangement is therefore the result of a meticulous gaze cast

onto things, discovering aspects never before seen. In this sense,

estrangement does not imply a distanced attitude, but rather a

continual and active observation of the surroundings.

I think that estrangement makes us conscious of the way we create narratives, discourses, and histories; it alerts us to the opposition between the fragmentary nature of knowledge and its inherent tendency toward completion.

the notion of the ‘spasmodic machine’ seems to correspond

to your ideas of the narrative within the exhibition, Solvej. What

role does the use of language and text play in the exhibition?

Yes, the ‘chapters’ or artworks in the show have a wild way

of relating and communicating and the combined result is un-

controllable. I In this exhibition it’s about presenting some-

one who actually took care of his or her story when it was

‘born’ into the world and you can feel this carefulness in the

passion and care for the language, which then actually makes

you forget that you are reading. Much text is written as fast as possible for example in emails, text messages and facebook announcements, all in the spirit of stress, whereas the joy of slow and deliberated articulation is what I am inter-ested in. I also appreciate the whole seductive


side of it and how artworks can expand your worldview. I often interpret the world through artworks

— I gain knowledge that helps me navigate my way in the

world much like I do from newspapers. I agree with what

Mariana is saying about how you should be careful about

how to represent either a fictional world or what we call the

‘real’ world. We get so many efficient press releases and so

much news that is more fictional than artworks sometimes

and it’s super hard to pay attention to it, to invest empathy or

to be impressed, which often leaves us numb.

Yeah, I agree, I think we need to be quite careful nowadays in

the way we play with language and not to become driven by ef-

ficiency. If you are driven by efficiency then everything becomes

so boring, so direct, so much the same. In order to preserve dif-

ference you need to pull back and slow down somehow.

Do you think that there is a way you could play with that

efficiency of language, the language of for example press releases?

For sure, one of the shows that inspired me the most is, as I

mentioned: BMW, (Black Market Worlds), that just gave like

a weird name on a card, and then because the curators ex-

pected that you would find your own way to the informa-

tion, if you really wanted it — since everyone googles every-

thing anyway. So the word was just Ultimere.com and then

you could go to a mind-map on the internet, where there

were these weird fictitious artwork descriptions and then

you would come to the fact that there would be a big exhibi-

tion, but the exhibition itself had lots of titles and, in a way,

it completely rejected efficiency, but on the other hand it was

working both with seduction and secrecy as a value. I think

that’s when I learned what I thought could be the vision of

the future where less information is more, sounds cliché but

I really believe in it. I mean to get more of the information

that you really search for or have more time for the things

you sense are important. I also think it is the competition of

attention we need to reduce – at least for our selves.

Do you both think that this tendency towards efficiency is

due to the fact that success is still measured by how many people

experience or see an exhibition?

Basically, the idea of efficiency is that the faster you tell people about your artwork or exhibi-tion, like a one-liner, the more you think you’ll sell the product and that more people might see it. But that’s, I think, definitely not the case anymore. There is a difference between looking and seeing.

Looking over it, meaning that you can say you have been there,

that you can tick it off in your calendar, and maybe other people

noticed you were there. Having seen an exhibition means that

you have understood it. And in a kind of larger extension of this

discourse are the phenomena, that when we have downloaded

an e-book or when we have copied a compendium, we have

‘consumed’ it and performing becomes a question of quantity.


It makes me think of the Spanish writer, Enrique Vila-Matas. I

have read his book BARTLEBY & CO where he talks about

writers who stopped writing at a certain point in their careers.

Maybe they just wrote one book or one page, so it is a collection

of biographies of all these people who decided to stop writing.

It is inspired by the novel Bartleby by Herman Melville, where

the main character Bartleby is working in an office doing pa-

perwork. Bartleby never leaves the office. So one day the boss

comes in and says, “Hey you need to leave, you need to go and

sleep somewhere else.” And Bartleby replies, “I would prefer

not to.” “But why are you doing this?” “I would prefer not to”.

That’s the only sentence he pronounces in the whole novel “I

would prefer not to”. So in Enrique-Vila-Matas’ BARTLEBY

& CO, Bartleby becomes a metaphor for these writers who sud-

denly decide to stop writing for many different reasons. He also

presents the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo . He only wrote two

fantastic books and when people interview him asking why he

stopped writing, he answers, “Well because my uncle who told

me all these stories died, so I have no more stories to tell”.

(Laughs)

I really like these examples because they are examples of the

power of rejection.

Being able to ‘choose not to’ instead of always having to

‘choose to’?

Yes, instead of something being fragile, disa-bled or stupid, it shows how it can be a weapon to say “I would prefer not to.”

That is also what the film Quirijn by Pablo Pijnappel is about.

The main protagonist Quirijn is a guy who actually lives out

the practice that you are talking about, Mariana, I’m curious if

he read Bartleby, but I think, Quirijn manages to study at the

art academy for 10 years without producing more than one

artwork —a shower cabin for his own use. Pijnappel knows

Quirijn and says that he is a really low-maintenance friend.

Being low maintenance as a person also means that you don’t

depend on other people so much for their evaluation of your

actions. We are coming back to the resistance of performing or just being, if that is possible, I mean, imagine a whole life without dead-lines and without the idea that you have to convince other people in all kind of ways. The high performance lifestyle in itself has become a machine that is not convincing. That’s the point.

Bartleby, who has been a topic for the last decade in the arts,

inspires many nowadays. Yet it takes quite a lot to step back

and not even try and convince the viewer. I think a lot of insti-

tutions feel they are forced to explain the artworks really fast,

because the viewer doesn’t have time to really see the artwork

or understand it. I don’t know exactly what understanding an

artwork means anyway, because it can often be more like ask-


ing the viewer existential questions and considering the exis-

tential questions as some people do or did in church, making

you think or associate about things that touched you, but have

not been digested. There is also the element of hedonism in

the film, because Quirijn is a healthy guy in a kind of healthy

body, so he’s sleeping enough and he is not exploiting himself,

but the other way around. Everyone needs purposelessness,

escapism or hedonism in some degree, I believe.

As mentioned, The Never odd or even project consists of a

book of non-written books — 30 book covers. in another book

project you did, The Invisible Collection, some of the books start

on page 147 and finish on page 162. Some were almost empty.

And most of them didn’t have a cover, as if they’d fallen out of

other books or compilations. What is it about the absence (of

information) that interests you? Sometimes absence draws at-

tention to what is not there, thus making it more present in a

way. But do you think the brain is able to skip chapters and still

make sense of the whole thing? is there a chance that the project

appears hermetic more than open ended?

When I started, I was mainly writing and producing artist’s

publications, but I wanted to find a way that I could also ac-

tivate a space and bring in a performative element. In 2003,

I did the project Interlude: The reader’s traces, an interven-

tion in public libraries in Berlin, New York and Paris. I was

interested in how a library functions as a public space. Books

in libraries are public items; many different people read the

same copy. Each reader leaves their own traces and marks:

a piece of paper used to separate the pages, a note, a train

ticket; all become unresolved texts, hinting at something to

be disclosed. The discovery of such traces creates an open-

ing, occupying an intermediate space. These interrup-tions suspend the continuous accumulation of knowledge and force us to enter a new time that has been cut from its original moorings. For one moment the database structure of the library and the

narrative experience of reading come together.

Based on this idea of the reader’s traces, I asked artists, de-

signers, writers and theoreticians to develop a piece. Each

contributor was asked to produce a nomad text, a loose page

to be inserted into library books. Each contributor was also

responsible for their own strategy of distribution within the

library: whether it was made for a particular section, a partic-

ular selection of books, a specific page, or if it was to be given

to all the readers on one day, etc. All the inserts were printed

and distributed according to the contributor’s instructions in

the public libraries in Berlin, Paris and New York. There is

no way of tracing the final outcome of the action; the inserts

should be found by accident.

And what is your interest in leaving traces?

The project contains ten different pieces that allowed me, as

the official distributor of the project, to explore the libraries

and disrupt them in a variety of forms and to observe phe-


nomena that otherwise would have passed unnoticed.

Harry Mathews made a handwritten love letter to be inserted

in The principles of quantum theory, Peter Piller selected a

single photograph from a large archive, showing a photo of a

house taken from the sky, for books about architecture, town

development and paranormal phenomenon; Dario Gamboni

gathered three quotations that relate to chance, something

like a forgotten page-marker that could then be reused, giving

an active turn to chance; Ian Monk took one of his working

notes to be distributed in pages 45; Enrique Vila-Matas wrote

a tale about a lost and irreplaceable text; Manuel Raeder used

unexposed photography as a bookmark for the short story

by Jorge Luis Borges The Book of Sand; Steve Rushton wrote

The tale of the talking ape and the talking baby, and as an ex-

tra story for the Thousand and one nights; I gathered a series

of photographs associated to an archaeology of modernism

from the Bauhaus building in Dessau; Raimundas Malasaus-

kas submitted an apparently random list of acknowledg-

ments; Paul Elliman made leather bookmarks to bear in mind

the books from where Frankensein’s creature learned to read

and Hubert Czerepok used the last scene from Antonioni’s

film Zabrinski Point for a screen saver to be installed in the

computers.

After finishing the project, I realized that it functioned in the

inverse way to common publishing strategies. Firstly, each

insert is dependent, in the sense that it is made to disturb

other texts, to be a parasite on them, but at the same time, in

the moment of being placed in a volume, it becomes unique,

it cannot be searched for, and is only accessible by accident.

This fact puts an accent on the paths that lead the reader from

one text to another and to how much chance is responsible

for these connections.

Apart from the gathered documentation there is no other

way to follow the reaction or the actual consequences of this

vast and secret gesture, the intention was to open a space in people’s imagination, to make them expect

the possibility of finding a trace or simply to consider the

reactions of other readers.

Solvej, what does it mean to you if people don’t see the rela-

tion between the work of Mariana’s project and the rest of the ex-

hibition: How does it branch off into the rest of the exhibition?

I think the Never odd or even art project is more clearly pre-

sented in this exhibition than before, where all the books are

now lying on the tangram table that Mariana designed with the

covers around antique books, so you are really focused on the

covers as potential books. Since the exhibition bears the title I

guess some visitors will try to find the link, but I don’t think

everybody needs to know that the exhibition is conceptually

inspired by this book in order to enjoy the atmosphere or dive

into the individual artworks. The individual artworks are actu-

ally curious enough on their own as well, which is what the

visitors of the exhibition in Berlin convinced me of — most

visitors stayed for hours and came back several times.


It is a moderately sized group show so I don’t intend to over-

estimate the role of a small exhibition, but it is about the hu-

man ability to express what’s on your mind and the different

forms at hand that can include a high level of complexity —

like mind-maps for example. Never odd or even is about the

theatrical skill that all humans have to express their interior

externally and about how they do it. It is about the relief you

can feel when you bring a matter to external perception. And

about co-authoring, so the form you give the story, the form

you give the sign, the text, and that all of that together is telling

us a lot about ourselves as humans, sides of our inner world

that are beyond the symbolic, but that we as an audience, eas-

ily sense.

i experienced that many got confused about how the cov-

ers are wrapped around the already existing, antique books, as

Solvej mentions. i think you once said that you like this confus-

ing part of the project, Mariana?

I’m not interested in confusing people, but I am interested in

metaphors and how the reader can make up their own story.

So in a way Never odd or even is a very simple way of do-

ing that, because it is just a cover of a book, where you read

the title and maybe realise that it doesn’t really exist, which

due to the questions that arise about who made it etc., maybe

leads to the beginning of building up a story. So it’s just a

target, or a way to start a history. It is like when someone

starts telling you a joke and you ask yourself: “Do I know

the end of the joke or not?” Therefore it’s a way to activate

the imagination of the viewer, but I’m not trying to confuse

people — not at all.

It was also a pleasure for me to work with Solvej to see how

she uses the idea of the book as a metaphor for something

else, which is completely different, with her own references,

so again it was a reading that lead to another thing, which was

a very gratifying experience for me.


Pablo Pijnappel— Quirijn 2011

Interview byMette Woller

Pablo PiJnaPPel Quirijn 2011 16 mm projection 15:00 min. 2/5 + 2 APCourtesy of the artist and Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam

072 never odd or even 073pablo pijnappel

value words and language as fundamentals of coexistence

with other people, and therefore survival. To know the local

language, to know the right thing to say (i.e. savoir-faire), to

understand the right key word, is what makes the difference

between outsider and friend, rejection and seduction, igno-

rance and insight. The world of the words is communication,

while the world of images is a more personal world.

Because of the linguistic confusion those comings and goings

brought me as a child, I was left very much in my imagina-

tion, in ‘a world of my own’. Making art was an attempt to

materialise this world, but in art school I realised that it could

only be successfully bridged to the other in combination with

language, which holds a common meaning to all. Images are

always fleeting and idiosyncratic until they are pinned down

with language — I guess I just somewhat contradicted the

quote from my book above, but what I mean to say is that

images have a very established meaning in my head, even

subconsciously, but to others they are enigmatic until I cir-

cumscribe their approximate meaning with language; but a

language as a common set of codes is also elusive until one

masters it.

in your work Quirijn, which is part of the Never odd or even ex-

hibition, we follow the life of your Dutch friend Quirijn drifting

around against a backdrop of Berlin. the story seems to follow

a narrative, however incomplete, that is fragmented and looped.

Although the story doesn’t appear to be based on a rollercoaster

I still can’t really get a firm grip on words, they remain like slippery bars of soap or cumbersome wooden blocks that I drop from my hands and stumble upon clumsily. It is only on paper or on my laptop screen after an exhilarating chase, that I sometimes manage to pin them down with my pencil or squash them flat with my fingertips.

the above excerpt is from your autobiographical book A Vision

in Time published to coincide with the exhibition Fontenay-aux-

Roses at carlier|gebauer and Juliette Jongma this year. Can you

elaborate your slippery relationship with words? How has lan-

guage and the written word come into play in your practice?

I guess words became very present in my life exactly because

of their ‘absence’. With my constant comings and goings

through many countries since I was a child (Paris, Rio, New

York, Amsterdam, Berlin), I was excluded from the world

of words every time I moved. Because of that I learned to

“


of dramatic pathos, it nevertheless offers exit-

ing moments: We are told that you are look-

ing for your friend Quirijn without revealing

how or whether you find him, while images,

text and time sometimes become parallel

worlds. Can you tell about your interest in

narrative and about never concluding a com-

plete picture?

I think each of us perceives each narrative

differently — there are some people that

can’t follow narratives at all — because of

our history, or the associations we make

and so on. To present an incomplete story

is to get close to the substratum of a nar-

rative, something that contains the basic

elements for anyone to complete a story

in their own mind, which in turn empha-

sises the particularity of interpretation.

It’s also a way of giving the viewer the

role of an investigator who has to put the

evidence together and draw conclusions — while everything

somehow remains very elusive and volatile. Nothing can be

pinned down for certain, like trying to complete a puzzle in-

side a bus driving in a very bumpy road, the pieces continue

to jump from one place to the other, the picture remains for-

ever incomplete... That’s how we witness real day events as

they unfold before our eyes.

Pablo PiJnaPPel

Quirijn2011 , 16 mm projection , 15:00 min. , 2/5 + 2 AP

Courtesy of the artist and Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam(photo by Laura Gianetti)

How is the use of the black ‘gaps’ — the frames between the film

sequences, consisting of a black screen with white text — related

to this?

The constant use of ‘gaps’ in my work has the function of

making ‘splices’ that fragment the narrative and give the

viewers cues to use their own ‘interior world’ to complete

that segment. Something also gets inverted there: instead of


many ways, he capitalises on time by not pursuing what most

people desire — to keep up with the pace of modern society

(for instance). He has no problem in waiting for a letter to ar-

rive because in the meantime, he might read a book, go for a

stroll or contemplate the clouds. He found a way of defying

the pressure of our high-tech capitalist society and staying

true to his own rhythm.

It’s maybe interesting to note that some people regard laziness

being exactly that: a capitalisation of action. One restrains

themselves from acting on something and procrastinates in-

stead, but you could also argue that the ‘lazy’ individual is

actually accumulating his surplus-value of time. Is not a coin-

cidence that Paul La Fargue, son-in-law of Karl-Marx, wrote

the manifesto “The Right to be Lazy” which became vitally

important in creating the eight-hour working day (at a time

when a 14-hour day in the factory was commonplace) by de-

fending the right to be idle.

Does Quirijn’s lifestyle in some way conceal some of your own

hopes and desires in relation to today’s society? in other words:

how do your own thoughts and history come into play in the

intimate narrations you create about your family and friends?

I think every work of fiction is somewhat autobiographi-

cal. Hemingway preached to “write about what you know”,

which is what writers do most of the time: they write about

the city they live in, or the time when they were younger, etc.

That auto-biographical aspect of fiction was not only very

the text help giving meaning to the images, the images help

the viewer get a grip on the text, much like illustrations in

children’s book. By the end of the viewing, many gaps and

fragments later, once the narrative is somewhat rendered as

a whole in someone’s mind, the story is as much the viewer’s

as it is mine.

in a text related to the film, you write about how Quirijn per-

sists in living like we were still in the 1990s — by not having a

cell-phone or a computer, or that he never uses any other forms

of technological communication such as email etc. Somehow

Quirijn’s Spartan lifestyle and phlegmatic nature is embedded in

the pace of the movie and the entire viewing experience, provid-

ing a kind of breathing hole in time. What are your considera-

tions in relation to time?

Well, in that film I try to illustrate what I perceive in the ‘real’

Quirijn, (though the film is as about as fictive as a newspaper

snapshot of a soccer game might be when compared to the

actual 90 minute game that took place in the field). This ‘real’

Quirijn has a relationship with time that is not marked by

goals and achievements; time for him is more of a continuum,

like a time-illusion instead of an optical-illusion — where in-

stead of not knowing whether an object is close up or far

away, big or small, time seems to be neither long or short,

slow or fast... Let me put this another way: Q is by defini-

tion not a capitalist because he doesn’t accumulate capital, he

only works enough for his subsistence, more or less, while in

078 never odd or even 079

later writing under the influence of ‘junk’, the text becoming

a translation of that experience; Kerouak defended writing

spontaneously without much mediation, much like an art-

ist might sketch a street while sitting on a café terrace; and

then later with Charles Boukowisky in the 60’s who, among

other things, wrote novels about someone, well,

someone just like himself (famous-old-alcoholic-

writer), with his infamous fictional pseudonym

Henry Chinaski. But somehow nobody likes to

put too much emphasis on how much they’ve

taken from their own lives in their books, almost

as if it would depreciate their creativity by calling

the material autobiographical. There is a thresh-

old where simply changing characters names or

changing the order of events (something that nu-

merous documentaries, both film and books, do)

turn a non-fiction to fiction.

It’s an inherent part of my work: this deconstruc-

tion of fiction by making ‘documentaries’ that,

although they use real names and real places,

are more fictive than most novels. Godard of-

ten called his films “documentaries of fiction”

because he created fictional situations (he often

doesn’t use a script), but on some level the situa-

tions became real once they’re played out. In my

case at least, this way of making ‘documentaries’

evident with Hemingway, but in modern American literature

at the beginning of the 20th century as a whole: most notably

with Henry Miller, who wrote a trilogy based on his experi-

ence in Paris in the 1930s; and then the beatniks in the 50´s;

Borroughs writing about his experiences of taking ‘junk’ and

Pablo PiJnaPPel Quirijn , 2011 , 16 mm projection 15:00 min. 2/5 + 2 APCourtesy of the artist and Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam

080 081never odd or even pablo pijnappel

is something that has happened spontaneously because it’s a

cheaper way of making fictional films, and perhaps more di-

rect as well: without always having the mediation of writing

a complete script — I just film it and edit it. Which brings

me to why I have been making 16 mm films instead of HD

videos. The 16mm forces me to have some kind of plan (be-

cause of the costs involved and the length of each roll, which

are sometimes only 3 minutes long), I have to edit the scenes

in my head before I even start filming, so in a very Deleuz-

ian (or Bergsonian) sense1, I have already made the film in

my head before picking up the camera. And voilá, after the

film is developed, my recollection of what I’d shot is turned

upside down: with the lapse of time between shooting it, and

developing and printing rushes, it had already been rendered

to fiction in my mind. Besides, the quality of film pushes this

cinematic atmosphere into reality that no HD can emulate,

it’s very visceral, it’s real cinema making.

is the documentation of Quirijn’s life (and his conservation of

time) a way to preserve him from being lost in memory?

We live in a time where memory is dramatically changing in

function and perhaps even in meaning. Things about our past

that we might want to forget can forever dwell in the sub-

conscious of the internet only to surface later to haunt us.

At the same time collective memory in the physical world is

fading. People have less need to be cultivated because they

can google anything at any time, which annihilates the kind

of distortion that occurs when we reccount a narrative from

our internal world with our own personal interpretation ...

To hear about the French revolution from a friend who’s

read or heard about it is very different to someone reading

it out quickly from their i-phone. That’s one of the reasons

why the analogue medium fascinates me: this noise produced

from copy to copy until it is rendered into something else,

while each copy remains unique. Our memory does some-

thing similar: whenever we remember something, we create a

new memory of an existing memory, which might have been

already a memory of a memory... And it is somewhat sad, but

at the same time very interesting, that this analogue world is

already a memory of itself...

1. I refer here to Cinema 1: Image-Movement, where Deleuze quotes Bergson’s Matter

and Memory (where he formulates a philosophy of the universe as being constituted of im-

ages ) in order to build his own theory of cinema as a sort of phenomenological device: “‘We

take snapshots, as it were, of the passing reality, we have only to string them on a becoming

abstract, uniform and invisible, situated at the back of the apparatus of knowledge. . .

Perception, intellection, language so proceed in general. Whether we would think becoming

or express it, or even perceive it, we hardly do anything else than set going a kind of cin-

ematograph inside us.’ Does this mean that for Bergson the cinema is only the projection, the

reproduction of a constant, universal illusion? As though we had always had cinema without

realising it?. . .”


János Fodor — a writtenconversation

Interview byMario Margani

János FoDorScharfes S2011Courtesy Kisterem Gallery, Budapest (photo by Laura Gianetti)

084 never odd or even 085jános fodor

The work Disk is a print of the unencrypted Phais-

tos Disk (from II millennium BC), whose alpha-

bet, purpose, meaning, dating, manufacture, and

in fact even its authenticity, remain widely dis-

puted. Fodor uses the MasterCard logo as a shape

to connect the current financial collapse and

incomprehensible financial market mechanisms

with the most discussed example of an indecipher-

able object within the field of Linguistic Anthro-

pology. In Fodor’s work the phrase “Master the

Possibilities” used by the giant of the debit and

credit system in its promotional campaigns, sounds

a bit like a hoax.

Fodor’s works in Never odd or even are conceptu-

ally constructed through research in alphabets and

cultural contexts, each piece itself becoming a ve-

hicle through time and culture.

The Hungarian Berlin-based artist

János Fodor’s (1975) practice encompasses draw-

ing, photography, sculpture, video and painting.

His works deal with topics such as material cul-

ture, mainstream and kitsch, and use languages as a

point of departure for his artistic production. Fodor

presents objects that raise questions of mystery, in-

terpretation and meaning from examples such as the

Klingon alphabet, the Rosetta Stone and misquoted

proverbs, produced through translation and the

mix-up of cultures, languages and common sense.

The re-contextualization of quotes and archaeo-

logical finds shape his works as he utilises quotes

and interpretations of ancient models to shed light

on modern day practices. Since alphabets, lan-

guages and signs often reflect social, cultural and

technological changes, texts are excellent instru-

ments for analysing cultural processes.

intro

086 never odd or even 087nomeJános FoDor, Disk, 2011, Courtesy Courtesy Kisterem Gallery, Budapest (photo by Laura Gianetti)


Behind their elegant and sober appearanc-

es, your works in Never odd or even seem

to be born of a deep interest in history and

popular culture, producing some rather

unexpected formal compositions. Why

have you chosen to play on boundaries,

both between real, forgotten and fictional

Alphabets, and between subcultures and

mainstream?

Texts, like languages themselves, are

products of abstraction. Abstracted

elements can be positioned more eas-

ily into other systems of understand-

ing as separated signs, which opens

new dimensions for fiction. My artistic

practice is following a micro sampling

method of reflecting on diffused ele-

ments of cultural history. I try to re-

interpret well-known connections by

developing new contexts. It’s a way of

better understanding the past, or at least of looking at our

time from a distance. Knowing about the past could help us

build a better present. According to the head-hunters of Pa-

pua New Guinea and other indigenous cultures, our future

is behind us, since we cannot see it, while the past is what we

can observe, therefore it’s front of us.

János FoDorMonolith (All These Worlds Are Yours Except Europa, Attempt No Landing There,

Use Them Together Use Them In Peace)2011, Black plexiglas, Courtesy Kisterem Gallery, Budapest (photo by Laura Gianetti)

in your work Monolith you apply a strategy of re-contextualising

a well-known relationship to the Rosetta Stone (from 196 BC, dis-

covered in 1803), the interpretation of which led to the first de-

coding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Monolith is a plexi duplicate of

the shape of the archaeological find, engraved with a sentence

from the sci-fi film 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984, Peter

Hyams): “All these worlds are yours except Europa, attempt no


landing there, use them together, use them in peace”. this was the

message relayed by the computer HAL, a figure in the movie, back

to humanity on Earth. Eventually you translate this sentence into

Hungarian runes, which are nowadays experiencing a revival, es-

pecially through the web-based Hungarian nationalist subculture.

What are you expecting from the viewer who faces your Monolith,

which preserves only the remnants of an archaeological value in

combination with elements of such various origins?

I would like to imagine this as layers of possible readings,

one after the other. It’s not necessary to go all the way to find

some kind of final result, it’s more like an invitation to an

adventure through cultural heritage. The final context is in-

fluenced by the viewer’s actual time as well. Apart from that,

artefacts can be objects of contemplation and beauty without

any previous comments, in the same way that it’s possible to

like something without understanding it. I was also attracted

by the fact that according to some semi-scientific research,

aliens’ language sounds Hungarian.

Another alphabet that can reflect this mix of scientific research

and fictional origin is the ‘Klingon alphabet’ that you use in the

work Supplement. it is a language developed off gibberish in the

1980s by the American linguist Mark Okrand for the Star trek

sci-fi series. in your artwork the sentence: “the Right to Refuse

to Kill” is engraved in Klingon on a plastic duplicate of another

well-known archaeological find, the Cyrus Cylinder (6th cen-

tury BC). the ancient clay cylinder with inscriptions in cunei-

form script represents an object that was interpreted in several

and conflicting ways. in 1960s the cylinder was interpreted as an

early "human rights charter" by, amongst others, the last Shah

of iran. Although the relationships between quotes, objects and

languages change, Supplement uses the amalgam of archaeol-

ogy, fictional elements and alphabets to shape an ironic clash of

meanings. What relationship do you see between the Cyrus Cyl-

inder and the Klingon alphabet?

It was basically an aesthetic decision; to me the letters of an-

cient Sumer have a similar kind of appearance to Klingon.

I am also interested in looking at political fiction as being a

driving force in the immediate future. In the U.S. more peo-

ple speak Klingon than Russian. This sounds like proof of

the power of imagination to me. Talking about the UDHR

(Universal Declaration of Human Rights), as I noticed, there

are at least two criticisms of the declaration, one from a con-

servative and one from a left wing point of view. In this case

I chose to work with the libertarian criticism that says that

‘The Right to Refuse to Kill’ is painfully missing from the

original text. The Star Trek Klingons seemingly personify

a classically rigid and authoritarian culture based on heroic

values, and in terms of universality, I thought this peculiar

artwork would maybe even better describe general human

values, since they also reflect individual rights.

in the 1960s, the Revolution in iran also tried to claim the im-

portance of the Cyrus Cylinder as a precursor to the UDHR, in


János FoDorSupplement (The Right To Refuse To Kill)2011Courtesy Private Collection, Budapest(photo by Laura Gianetti)


order to associate the figure of the Shah with the monarchy of

Persia’s past and with Cyrus in particular. in your piece 1 Picture

says more than a 1000 words, we can find the appropriation of

the past in the field of advertising. in 1921 the publicist Fred R.

Barnard used the title “One look is worth a thousand words” in

the advertising trade journal Printer’s Ink to promote the use of

images in advertisement on the side of streetcars. in 1927 in an-

other advertisement in the same journal Barnard attributed the

phrase “One Picture is Worth ten thousand Words” to an un-

specified ‘famous Chinese philosopher’, to give his words added

value. For many years later it was believed that the phrase truly

came from some Chinese tradition. Why have you decided to re-

present Barnard statement?

From a logical positivist point of view, languages are im-

perfect tools for description. Poetry can probably go fur-

ther. In reality, the description of an image could say more

than the image itself, but only in the given context. Images

are predators for contexts otherwise they’re not much more

than illustrations. Art has its own language that is continu-

ously overwritten according to the latest developments in art

theory and practice. I found it a bit similar to this static rela-

tion to reality. The text in this work is an authentic American

proverb, developed by a salesman, whose later intention was

to introduce it as a ‘Chinese proverb’ so people would take

it more seriously. In some extent this story even recalls the

responsibility of the scripturists for me.

János FoDor

1 Picture Says More Than 1000 Words2008, Mirror

Courtesy Kisterem Gallery, Budapest (photo by Laura Gianetti)


Your works are deeply rooted in real events or tendencies, but

using the process of decontextualisation, they also convey a feel-

ing of extra terrestrial provenance. the Rosetta Stone represents

the real monolith of knowledge, without which Egyptian hier-

oglyphics would have remained an unencrypted and therefore

an alien alphabet. the piece Forward to the Past reminds us that

the collective imagination of future and past are tightly related.

What role might text play in the imagination of the future?

Texts are codes, therefore only open to the privileged mi-

norities who are able to decode them. Seeing the expansion

of images in communication, I’m expecting the devaluation

of written text, and a development of a more complex vis-

ual language. It seems that contexts are inexorably becom-

ing more important than texts themselves. Shorter texts are

faster messages, and since our attention is on auction, shorter

texts could be more effective in describing context. The capa-

bility of reading the synonym of recorded knowledge, pos-

sibly with math and art, are the only heritages that make us

different to animals.

Artists

Text by

Solvej Helweg Ovesen (SHO)

Mette Woller (MW)

Mario Margani (MM)

rosa barba

erik beltrán

nanna Debois buhl & brenDan FernanDes


siMon evans


János FoDor

lise harlev

FerDinanD kriWetJán ManCuška

tris vonna-MitChell

CiPrian Muresan

henrik olesen

aDaM PenDleton

Pablo PiJnaPPel

sebastián roMo

DMitry vilensky (Chto Delat?)PhilliP ZaCh


rosa barba (1972, IT-DE) – based in Berlin

Machine Vision Seekers (2004)A sci-fi story written by a moving

projector on the wall. Almost as if it is seeking its audience, the moving projector aggressively throws words onto the walls, making the surroundings part of a frag-mented sci-fi story about 5 people walking through a tunnel and describing the physical and mental sensation. The story is authrored by Rosa Barba and stops when the light hits at the end of the tunnel. The two-dimensional screen is abandoned and images are replaced with text fragments, thus making the script both image and storyteller. Instead of trying to conceal the source of the projected image, Rosa Barba transforms it into the centre of attention, making the sound of its 16mm pulse and mechanical movements part of an envelop-ing, kinetic, imageless cinema. In this way, Barba uses the materiality of film to go beyond normal cinematographic means.

MW

eriCk beltrán (1974, MX) – based in Barcelona

Die Morelli Zeitzeile (2009)Individual timelines. What would

happen if history were ‘written’ through the comparison of personal timelines based on knowledge collected throughout one’s life? Erick Beltrán’s “Morelli Timeline” constructs a narrative of the total history in his mind, a story in which Adam and the dinosaurs as well as Asterix and Obelix, Christ, the Big Bang, Obama and the artist himself coexist. But a lot of events, places and people are missing.

The action of collecting, order-ing, mapping and comparing was the foundation of the 19th century Italian

art historian and connoisseur, Giovanni Morelli’s theory, the ‘Morellian’ technique. It consisted in identifying the ‘hand’ of a painter through minor details reveal-ing artists’ conventions of portraying, for example, ears. Interpreting this theory from an anthropological point of view, every single timeline in the world could be different and represent one’s own beliefs, experiences and preferences.

MM

nanna Debois buhl & brenDan FernanDes Nanna Debois Buhl (1975, DK) – based in New York & Brendan Fernandes (1979, KEN) – based in Toronto and New York

In Your Words (2011)A film on the migration of words.

Nanna Debois Buhl and Brendan Fern-andes link literature, visual art and the need to adapt their own languages to the differ-ent home bases (Kenya, Denmark, USA) in a multilingual dialogue with the Danish author Karen Blixen (Out of Africa, 1937). The uninterrupted comparisons and con-trasts in the translations of birds name’s and of different expressions for introductions and greetings in Swahili, English and Dan-ish take the shape of an increasing waterfall of words. This turns into a refrain, which bridges gaps between different cultures using the concepts of flying and migrating as metaphors reflecting post-colonialism. Focusing on the elusiveness of the spoken word, the film unfolds themes of identity and underlines the value of difference. At the same time the latter becomes an obstacle or even a boundary whose crossing always entails a loss.

MM


(1975, MX) – based in Berlin

Never odd or even (2011)A book in a book in a book. The point

of departure of the exhibition and it’s title comes from the legendary book and performance project, “Never odd or even”, 2005-2011, by the Mexican artist Mariana Castillo Deball. Her project consists of a book of ‘unwritten books’ – 30 book covers designed by authors, artists, and graphic de-signers selected by the artist and published as one book. A new edition of the “Never odd or even” book has been invented and published (by “Bom dia boa tarde boa noite”) for this exhibition. The imagined content of these book covers of ‘unwrit-ten books’ will be performed during the exhibition by authors, poets, theoreticians, and artists, who all choose a cover made by another author or designer to present. The installation of this exhibition is inspired by the mise en abyme effect also present in the “Never odd or even” book.

SHO

siMon evans

(1965, UK) – based in Berlin

Symptoms of Loneliness (2009)Mind mapping. Whatever is on Simon

Evans’ mind is often on a map in his artworks. Mental states, personal stories and belongings are ordered on the visual mappings of disparate hospital floor plans, a city, a church, or a set of hands. Symptoms of Loneliness was created as the artist found himself generally alone when he first moved to Berlin. The following symptoms were observed – “The people you end up with stink”, “Saying what I don’t fully believe and expecting you to ignore it”, “Looking for Love in Business (Shop People, People in Art Galleries etc.)”

– and given a spatially structured ‘residue’ on a map of a set of hands, on a paper.

SHO


(1952, CH /1946, CH) – based in Zurich

How To Work Better (1991-2000)Instructions. Originally, the ten-point

manifesto How To Work Better served as a freestanding signboard in a pottery factory in Thailand (both in Thai and English), photographed by Fischli & Weiss in 1990. “Accept change as inevitable”, “Admit mistakes”, “Say it simple”. Is this all meant seriously? The simplicity and common sense of the text instructions may generate a wry smile of acceptance when we read them. Maybe it’s the longing for tangible facts and rules in our daily work life? The text is hard to disagree with. Seen from a global perspective, the artists hold up a mirror to the peaceful sounding, corporate motivational strategies intended to govern lives and work ethics today. MW

János FoDor

(1975, HU) – based in Berlin

Monolith (All These Worlds Are Yours Except Europa, Attempt No Landing There, Use Them Together Use Them In Peace) (2011) Supplement (The Right To Refuse To Kill) (2011) Forward To The Past (2011)N. Carolina (2009) 1 Picture Says More Than 1000 Words (2008) Scharfes S (2011)Less (2010)Disk (2011)

Alphabets and cultural context. Lan-guage plays a significant role in Fodor’s


works. Through the observation of kitsch and mass culture he detects associations and accidental occurrences, which are capable of connecting historical moments in the anthropology of writing with today’s ex-amples of sophistication, exaggeration and camp attitude. The silhouette of the Mono-lith is a plexi-copy of the Rosetta stone, a discovery that opened to the comprehen-sion of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Fodor also quotes a text in old Hungarian runes, which nowadays are living a popular revival that is turning them into an element of ideological nationalist subculture. This constant Post-modern exchangeability of meaning and reference can lead to a watered down and vulgarized verbal culture. Text, context and sign are thus playfully reconnected to past, present and future in this artistic oeuvre.

MM

lise harlev

(1973, DK) – based in Berlin

Dear Hairdresser (2009)Typography tells its own story. In the

work of Lise Harlev, colourful shapes, signs and forms merge together on what seems to be a meticulously arranged working table. Three letters written from the artist to shop owners using the very conventional, yet world famous Helvetica font, draw atten-tion to their choices of typography on their outdoor signs. Like tickling movements, the personal letters from the artist to the ki-osk owner, reverend and hairdresser stress how text becomes both an autonomous image and carrier of message simultane-ously and reading and seeing parallel ways of understanding.

MW

FerDinanD kriWet(1942, DE) – based in Dresden

Rundscheiben (1961-1963)Concrete Poetry. Poetry of the surface,

the literal sound of the letter and text as image characterize the series Rundscheiben (‘Roundels’, 10 offset prints), by Ferdinand KRIWET. These phonetically functioning text circuits that implode for the eye, free the narration from chronology and allow the reading eye to jump according to visual measures and listen according to the sound of the words and letters. Concrete Poetry is an artistic tradition, where the relation between the visual appearance of the text (the text image) and its content is essential. Artists such as Dieter Roth, Daniel Spoerri, Emmett Williams and Öyvind Fahlström are often credited in regards to the tradition. KRIWET had a breakthrough in the age of 19 for his first book “ROTOR” (1961) written, freed from semantic rules, as one long text without capitals, full stops or commas. Later his artistic invention is the “programmatic poetry” expressed on the extended series of Rundscheiben.

SHO

Ján ManCuška

(1972-2011, SK)

In Memory (2006)A space in reality for the projection of

memories. Jan Mancuška’s oeuvre, which includes film, light and slide projections, theatre plays and paper work focuses on the reception and conception of space and text, on multiplying the role of the author and involving the audience in creating the narrative content. In memory consists of 10 Xerox copies, where the sentence “In Memory thought doesn’t turn to reality itself, but how that reality was

recorded.” appears and disappears fragment by fragment. Thus, the artwork performs its content in terms of the textual presentation when activated by the readers’ movement and projection of their own sense of memory.

SHO

CiPrian Muresan

(1977, RO) – based in Cluj

Dog Luv (2009)Discourses corrupting the mind.

Literature are translated into images in the work of Ciprian Muresan, in which a group of five anthropomorphic dogs recite the history of human cruelty from Ancient Greece to present – in order to better understand their social behaviour. Initially, the members of ‘The Republic Dog-machina’ laugh of the seeming ludicrous-ness of what their leader, the bulldog ‘Mad Dog’ tells them. The irrational and animal manner of the brutality seems perplexing. However, at the end of the lesson a new awareness of jealousy, fear and bigotry and persuasive convictions influences the dogs’ behaviour. In this way Dog Luv stresses the fragile yet compelling thread between self and the world and how knowledge may corrupt one’s mind and actions when paired with uncertainty and division.

MW

henrik olesen

((1967, DK) – based in Berlin and Florence

Portraits/Alphabet (version) (2008/2011)

Body build by language. The print series Portraits/Alphabet is inspired by the idea that power relations and hierarchies of the body exists in the very structure of language. The collages function as portraits of different bodies. Gradually an alphabet

and a portrait through body parts, such as “head”, “knee”, “foot”, or “thumb”, “penis” builds up in the series. Parallel to the construction of a language, it breaks it’s own logic. The letter typography come from Olesens’ adaptations of the handwriting of Francis Picabia in his ‘machine-portraits’ (1916-1918). And thus he performs an automation of the subjective. In the ‘machine-portraits’ Picabia portrayed his friends as machines such as Guillaume Apollinaire and Tristan Tzara.

SHO

aDaM PenDleton

(1980, US) – based in New York

Black Dada (2008)Black Dada absorbs the rhythm

of life. The “Black Dada” manifesto is seductive, profane, critical and bouncing when you read it or Pendleton performs it. “Black Dada” softens the edges of Concrete Poetry and adapts Art history using language to create new sensational or profane images inside the absurdity of the traditional use of Dada language. Pendleton lyrically sings another Dada deriving from the breath of his life, the traditions of soul music and what is considered ‘a matter of fact’.“Black DadaThe Black Dada must…The Black Dada must use irrational language.The Black Dada must exploit the logic of identity.The Black Dada’s manifesto is both form and life.can you feel it?does it hurt?is this too soft?do you like it?”

SHO


Pablo PiJnaPPel

(1979, FR) – based in Berlin

Quirijn (2011)Histories with a small ‘h’. Pablo

Pijnappel is interested in the stories people tell about themselves and each other, the adventures of outstanding individuals and biographies mixed with fiction. Often using 16mm film, Pijnappel follows the nomadic life of his own family and friends in a format between a filmed novel and documentary. His latest work follows his friend Quirijn, for whom being lazy or doing nothing (not working, and although educated as an artist, not making one piece of art) is almost a political and philosophical statement, against efficiency, as he hangs around in Berlin. Pijnappel has written the voice over ‘mindset’ for Quirijn (appearing as subtitles) trying to imagine the self-dialogue or self-telling of his friend, the main protagonist in the film.

SHO

sebastián roMo

(1973, MEX) – based in Mexico City

Limite! (2004)Mexico city build by sensations and

ideas. Limite! is a sculptural work, where the cityscape of Mexico city becomes text and text becomes the architecture of subjec-tive views on the city. It is concerned with how one gets reconnected to a city. For years Sebastián Romo has collected words suggested by various inhabitants of Mexico City in order to gather ideas and feelings that shape the perception of the city. After living in New York post September 11th, his coming back to Mexico City inspired a rediscovery of this urban landscape. Each time Limite! is displayed, Romo replaces the old words with new ones or moves them modifying the composition and mir-

roring the changes that take place day by day in Mexico City. Connecting micro and macro worlds, Romo’s sociological research unfolds as a community-based landmark, where the ‘bricks’ carry subjective views. Mexico city is in fact build on a lake thus the metal surface of the installation.

MM

DMitry vilensky (Chto Delat?)(1964, RU) – based in Skt. Petersborg

Century of Manifestos. Play for a few Actors, (2009)

Century of Manifestos. Play for a few Actors is a manifesto on the inner logic of the 20th century manifestos presented as a constructivist film collage. Inherently Vilensky’s quotes from the manifestos reveal, amongst other things, his own sub-jective manifesto – for example against the transformation of reality into art. Dmitry Vilensky is also working with performanc-es as filmmaker and editor of the infamous Russian produced RU/ENG newspaper “Chto Delat? (What is to be done?)” on the political transformation in Russia, and matters of engaged art.

SHO

tris vonna-MiChell (1982, GB) – based in Stockholm

Tris Vonna-Michell is a storyteller and

a performer and as part of doing and being

so, he photographs. He makes slide photos

and has a great passion for this low-tech and

tactile photographic medium as well as the

projectors themselves. His artworks appear as

spoken word performances (live or recorded)

accompanied by slideshows. With an insisting

rhythm and inspired by concrete poetry as

well as streams of urban impressions, Vonna-

Mitchell speaks as a mesmerising oracle of

selected internalised subjects. The stories he

tells are about urban history e.g. of Detroit,

Berlin – of places, events and their creation –

often guided or interrupted by lapses into his

own associations and childhood memories

from Essex, Great Britain.

SHO

PhilliP ZaCh

(1984, DE) – based in Frankfurt am Main

Untitled (2011 and 2012)Displaced quotes. The quote-based

intervention by Phillip Zach arises from unused spots and corners, wittingly and ironically subverting contemporary rheto-ric and the politics of dividing and sharing exhibition territory or practise. Using these niches between rifts, cracks or the works of others, Zach draws attention to his silver-foil texts quoting a vast range of written matter collected through disparate contexts. Quotes from newspapers and lit-erature as well as his own words compose a corpus of mental cracks in the exhibition walls, which easily leads to interpretive dis-tortions and inserts thoughts in the place of classical art.

TexT shown in Grimmuseum, Berlin, mirror foil:To tell the truth, I rarely did portraits.Those of my mother and father are now at the Metropolitain Museum, in one of the main painting galleries on the second floor. Well, all of my paintings are now in those galleries in the Metropolitain Museum.What i did was stand them between vari-ous canvases in the permanent collection, wherever there was sufficient wall space. Some few overlapped those others, but only at their lower corners, generally.

Very likely a certain amount of warp has occurred in mine since, however. From hav-ing been leaning for so many years rather than being hung, that would be.

TexT shown in museeT for samTidskunsT, roskile, almond coloured shiny

foil, red parTs in red shiny foil:Meantime that question of things existing only in one's head may still be troubling me slightly, to tell the truth.Moreover, what is really in my head is not a fire, but a painting by Van Gogh of that fire. Which is to say the painting by Van Gogh that one can see if one squints just a little. With all of those swirls, as in The Starry Night. And with anxiety in it, even. Even if a certain amount of anxiety may be simply over the likelihood that the paintingwill not sell, of course. Although as a matter of fact what has now suddenly happened is that I am not actually seeing the paintingitself, but am seeing a reproduction of the painting. In addition to which the repro-duction even has a caption, which says that the painting is called The Broken Bottles. And is in the Uffizi. Now obviously there is no painting by Van Gogh called The Broken Bottles in the Uffizi. There is no painting by Van Gogh called The Broken Bottles anywhere, in fact, including even in my head, since as I have said what is in my head is only a reproduction of the painting.

MM

0104 never odd or even

Never odd or eveN A te x t spAced e x hibit ion

curated by solvej helweg ovesen

with Rosa barba, erick beltrán, nanna debois buhl & brendan Fernandes,

Mariana castillo deball, simon evans, peter Fischli | david Weiss,

János Fodor, Lise harlev, Ferdinand KRiWet, Ján Mancuška, ciprian Muresan,

henrik olesen, Adam pendleton, pablo pijnappel, sebastián Romo,

tris Vonna-Michell, dmitry Vilensky (chto delat?) , phillip Zach

01. october > 20. november, 2011_Grimmuseum, berlin, Germany

13. January > 08. April, 2012_ Museum of contemporary Art, Roskilde, denmark

Museet for SamtidskunstMuseum of Contemporary ArtStændertorvet 3ADK-4000 [email protected]

GrimmuseumFichte Strasse 210967, [email protected]

the exhibition is co-produced by Grimmuseum Berlin and Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, Denmark

Cover image by Mariana Castillo

Deball, Never odd or even, 2011

never odd or even ebook

Documents

solvej helweg ovesen014

visual art

artistsnever odd

nomenever odd

profile of museum

laura gianettinever

mette wollerdocumentat

comdocumentat ion