Transaksjoner (Del 1)
OCA - Office of Contemporary Anarchy og FORLAGET ATTÅT ønsker velkommen til utstillingene Transaksjoner (Del 1). Transaksjoner er en utstillingsserie som bruker gallerirommet som eksperimentelt laboratorium for litteratur og kunst. Utstillingene blir fulgt opp av et seminar og en rapport senere i høst hvor erfaringene fra utstillingene presenteres og diskuteres.
Åpning lørdag 29. august kl. 14.00 (samtidig med Momentum). Heinrich Gerners gate 12. Moss
(gamle Mølla kunstskole, tre minutter gange fra Momentumhallen).
Thomas Kvams manifest The Average Art Manifesto publiseres i sin helhet sammen med Kvams spillelfilm
The Average Idiots og et utvalg av hans gjennomsnittlige Munch-malerier. Paal Bjelke Andersen viser
lydinstallasjonen Jeg leser i et rom.
Utstillingen følges opp av en gruppeutstilling kuratert av Kvam og Andersen i perioden 12. til 27. september,
hvor det vises arbeider av billedkunstnerne Arne Borgan, Shwan Dler Qaradaki og Marianne Heier og av
forfatterne Arve Kleiva, Jørn H. Sværen og Erik Bakken Olafsen.
Paal Bjelke Andersen: Jeg sitter i et rom
De siste årene har jeg hatt rollene som både forfatter, tidsskriftredaktør, forlegger og arrangør innenfor det skandinaviske litteraturfeltet.
I Jeg leser i et rom lar jeg «det lyriske», representert ved tre poeters stemmer, fraktes fra den litterære konteksten og inn i dette spesifikke rommet. Arbeidet tar utgangspunkt i den amerikanske komponisten Alvin Luciers stykke fra 1969, I'm sitting in a room, hvor Lucier ved å gjentatte ganger spille av sin egen stemme, ta opp avspillingen og spille den av igjen, oppnår at resonansen i rommet sakte men sikkert erstatter og flater ut semantikken og fonetikken i den opprinnelige ytringen. I denne versjonen skjer dette med en norsk, en svensk og en dansk poets stemme. Dermed får den lyriske materialiteten både manifestere seg i og transformeres av møtet med gallerirommet. Samtidig møtes hele det skandinaviske litterære feltet, representert ved hver av de tre nasjonalspråkene.I så måte er arbeidet også et forsøk på å konstruere et fellesskandinavisk språklig og lyrisk klangbilde, og en destruksjon av det som i en litterær kontekst gjør både det skandinaviske og det lyriske gjenkjennelig: de lokale og individuelle språkene. Stemmer: Morten Søndergaard, Per Bäckström og Paal Bjelke Andersen.
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Thomas Kvam: The Average Art Manifesto
Enkelte vil nok innvende at den gjennomsnittlige kunsten, i fraværet av enhver originalitet, blir original.
La meg presisere det innlysende: Hvis du forveksler The Average Art Manifesto, de gjennomsnittlige
Edward Munch-maleriene og dogmekunstverket The Average Idiots med originalitet, mangfoldiggjør
du bare den gjennomsnittlige idiotien.
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The Average Art Manifesto
I am spending my 37th year practicing average uncreativity.
On Friday, May 19, 2009, I began repainting Edwards Munch`s oeuvre, some 1789 paintings, stroke by stroke, from the upper left hand corner to the lower right hand corner, canvas by canvas. I used the average color value found in each original Munch painting. Today, August 23, 2009, I stopped painting, two month’s work and I am not even half way through the project I originally intend to finish by New Year's Day.
The object of the project is to be as uncreative in the process as possible. It's one of the hardest constraints an artist can muster, particularly on a project of this scale; with every stroke of paint comes the temptation to "express," "decorate," and "distort" the average monochromes. But to do so would be to foil the exercise.
I've long been an advocate of extreme averages in film, painting and art in general – as my feature film The Average Idiots (2008) – where each frame from Lars Von Trier’s film, The Idiots (1998) is processed frame by frame to its average monochromatic color value. When the average value of some
197 210 frames where finished, Jean-Luc Godard’s postulate; cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second, revealed itself as true idiocy in the same frequency.
Never have I faced a movie this dry, this extreme, this boring. John Cage said "If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." The Average Idiots is immune to this Cageian mindset - it demands an average state of mind.
Repainting Munch`s paintings in its average color value is the most nutritionless act of appropriation I could conceive of. Had I instead, for example, repainted Kazimir Malevich, White on White, in its average white color, there would have been too much value. For Malevich, the purpose of White on White, as we all know, is to transcend the white monochrome and, by consequence, the object-status of painting, to attain a metaphysical state of contemplation.
Almost 100 years ago the visual arts came to terms with this issue in Duchamp's "Urinal." Later Marcel Broodthaers, then Koons, extended this practice. In music we have wide array of examples from John Oswald's Plunderphonics to the ubiquitous practice of sampling. Where has the average art been in this dialogue? One hundred years after Duchamp, why hasn't average art become a valid, sustained or even tested artistic practice?
John Cage, whose mission was to accept all sound as music, failed. His filter was on too high. He permitted only the sounds that fell into his worldview. Commercial sounds, pop music, lowbrow culture, sounds of violence and aggression, etc. held no place in the Cagean pantheon. Certainly, nutritionlessness was not what we would consider a Cagean attribute. However, if John Cage theoretically claimed that any sound can be music, then we logically must conclude that, properly framed, anything can be average.
Average art seems to be a perfect place to locate a valueless practice; as a gift economy, it is one of the last practices allowing non-functionality in late capitalism. Both theoretically and politically the field remains wide open. But in capitalism, labor equals value. So certainly my project must have value, for if my time is worth an hourly wage, then I might be paid handsomely for this work. But the truth is that I've subverted this equation. I rescued the Average Munch paintings, through laziness, from the surplus value of conceptual consistency.
Remembering Kenneth Goldsmith last remarks in his essay, Uncreativity as a creative practice; When I reach 40, I hope to have cleansed myself of all creativity, but unlike Goldsmith I have cleansed my self not only of creativity but also of originality.
Thomas Kvam, 23 August 2009