Hans Schabus

Remains of the Day Hans Schabus

5 August – 4 September Mon–Sun, 10am–6pm 6 September – 2 October Tues–Sun, 11am–5pm

Remains of the Day Hans Schabus

Collective is delighted to present the first solo show in Scotland by Austrian artist Hans Schabus. Remains of the Day is presented during the Edinburgh Art Festival, August 2011 and comprises a new Collective commission and previous film work.

Renowned for disrupting and reconfiguring space in unexpected ways, Hans Schabus often produces site-specific installations that rely upon the physical and psychological effects of spatial displacement to demythologise cultural symbols. For Remains of the Day, Schabus will transform Collective’s interior with a formal presentation of the rubbish accumulated by the artist and his family during one calendar year - installed, cleaned, categorised and displayed linearly along the white cube gallery spaces and through the reception area. The work can be viewed from inside and outside of the gallery through the street level picture windows as an unbroken wall, which moves through the gallery with no regard for the boundaries of the space.

Schabus questions the existing spatial data of the gallery and subverts the typical standard ‘white cube’ exhibition by using everyday household objects to create a sculptural architecture which interferes with the viewer’s perceptions and references.

This work brings into focus aspects of the world which we currently inhabit, like the concept of scarcity as a fundamental economic problem. Scarcity implies that not all of society's goals can be pursued at the same time; trade-offs are made.

Certain goods are inherently scarce by definition or by design; examples include land and positional goods such as awards and membership of elites. Even in a theoretical post-scarcity society,

2

certain goods, such as desirable land and original art pieces, remain scarce, reflecting societal institutions.

If one looks at this idea within the model of post-scarcity even without postulating new technologies, it is conceivable that already there exists enough energy, raw materials and biological resources to provide a comfortable lifestyle for every person on earth. However even within the model of post-scarcity, (a hypothetical form of economy, often explored in science fiction) in which things such as goods, services and information are free, or practically free, still positional goods and intellectual capital remain scarce.

In a world where things derive all or most of their value from their scarcity and cultural capital, Hans asks us to consider our relationship with what remains, from trade, labour and our human existence.

Collective are also showing Western, 2002; a film work by Hans Schabus. This will be screened at selected times on the BBC Big Screen in Festival Square. The 11-minute film Western shows Schabus rowing and sailing his way through the tunnels of Vienna’s underground sewage system in a boat he built himself.

Born in Watschig, Austria, 1970, Hans Schabus lives and works in Vienna. He studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Bruno Gironcoli.

Schabus was selected to represent Austria in the 2005 Venice Biennale.

Western The 11-minute film Western shows Hans Schabus rowing and sailing his way through the labyrinthine tunnels of Vienna’s underground sewage system.

His unending, Ulysses-like voyage through sewage, darkness and waste dredges up the universal quests of escape, both literal and metaphysical.

Schabus travels through this maze on a boat he built that was originally designed after a class of small, unsinkable children’s dinghies appropriately called ‘Optimist’. Hans’ fold-up and cartable version, however, is named ‘forlorn’, in anticipation of its daunting and dirty journeys.

While the title Western clearly puns on an entire genre of Hollywood filmmaking, Schabus has also subtly referenced director Carol Reed’s film-noir masterpiece The Third Man, 1948. Reed’s film is a story about an American man (Joseph Cotton) who must journey in the opposite direction, back to Europe, in order to attend the funeral of his best friend (Orson Wells). Schabus opens his film Western with the original theme song in The Third Man, composed by Anton Karas.

As ‘forlorn’ enters the tunnels, the soundtrack is slowed down, creating deep primal sounds which echo the artist’s journey.

Western Showing Times 4 August – 1 September Thursdays 6–9pm on the hour Sundays 10am–6pm on the hour (except the 28 August) BBC Big Screen Festival Square Off Lothian Road Edinburgh EH3 9SR 3

Waste of Time

By Wolfgang Popp What I possess seems something far away and what had disappeared proves real.

Maira Kalman Looking at the title of Austrian Hans Schabus’ solo show, one is instantly reminded of Kazuo Ishiguro’s bestselling novel ‘The Remains of the Day’. In the book an old butler contemplates his unfulfilled love to his former colleague Miss Kenton.

The Remains of the Day can therefore be interpreted as memories, as recollections of certain – fateful – biographical traces.

But the term remains of the day is also a synonym for day’s residues, both translations of the German Freudian term Rückstände des Tages. (Hans Schabus lives and works in Freud’s hometown Vienna.) It’s about experiences that were made but could not be actively processed by the consciousness. It’s about an overdose of life, a “too much” that because of the person’s incapability to cope with it, tells a lot about him or her - probably more and more truthful than the person could consciously tell about him/herself.

Schabus’ day’s residues are not of psychological nature. They are down-toearth materials: paper, plastic bottles and tin cans, used diapers, disassembled cardboard boxes and empty yoghurt mugs. And it’s not only one day’s but 365 day’s residues.

What is on display here is one year’s waste not only of Hans Schabus himself but of his family. What does it mean putting a technical term coined by and being closely associated with psychoanalysis to name this complex sculpture that basically consists of a heap of waste?

4

The title simply suggests that waste can be read as the materialistic equivalent of the psychological contents Freud is referring to. And the two assumed counterparts really have decisive characteristics in common.

Both tell without being asked. And both tell more than one could consciously remember.

That garbage can tell - even exhaustively – is something archaeologists have long been relying on. The most prolific parts of an excavation site for this reason are rubbish pits. It therefore was no coincidence that it was an archaeologist/anthropologist who reinstalled garbology within social sciences.

In 1973 William Rathje established The Garbage Project that studied the contents of Tucson (Arizona) resident’s waste in order to examine their patterns of consumption.

One of the conclusions of the study was the fact that the information the people freely volunteered about their consumption (e.g. alcohol) did not tally with the things the waste told. Or in Rathje’s own words: “That what people have owned and thrown away can speak more eloquently, informatively and truthfully about the lives they lead than they themselves ever may.” Or in short: “We are what we throw away!”

But Hans Schabus is not interested in exposing someone else, for what he does is a survey of his own consumerist habits; he seeks the confrontation with his innocent, naïve and often unreflected decisions made as a consumer. And as consumption - which is often neglected - is always also a political act, waste can also be interpreted in a historical/political context.

By now we have stressed the parallels between psychological contents and waste, but the differences between the two are also of significant importance.

First: in contrast to psychological contents waste can be willingly dumped - and thereby forgotten. Rubbish vanishes without leaving a trace - at least from one’s own home. But what if you don’t dump it? If you do with the waste what the unconscious does with the memories. What if you keep your waste?

And not only keep it, but turn the cleaning and arranging of the rubbish into a daily ritual - a standard process like cooking, doing your shopping or brushing your teeth. Being thereby confronted with the day’s residues, doing the waste comes close to contemplating the day. Over a period of time it makes the breaks, cracks and fissures within one’s biography visible.

The second difference between waste and psychological contents: trash can be willingly and tactically arranged. And that is what Schabus is doing. He has cleaned and categorised the trash and – most importantly – decided about an elaborate way to display it. Stating that doing the waste is nothing less than a very reliable form of autobiographical writing, of keeping a diary, Hans Schabus imitates this process of writing and reading by arranging the waste from left to right along a straight writing line. For the visitor the habitual reading movement done only by the eyes is transposed into a movement involving the whole body. The analogy of doing the waste and writing is a point Hans Schabus further contemplates on. By displaying the year’s trash along the line he has published the big story, the novel. But the novel, through time, was often in crisis and declared dead.

Schabus reflects this fact by also displaying four micro stories - fragments - which by many avant-garde writers were estimated

as the only way one can still cope with the realities of this highly accelerated present.

One of the fragments on display is a mousetrap, an almost lyrical hint on his Tom-and-Jerry-like fight against these unwanted cohabitants in his atelier.

Then there are his car’s tyres set up as a column - with the column being a form that refers to the Endless Column by Constantin Brâncusi. The tyres tell about his moves and travels - where he has also produced trash.

Sticking to Schabus’ sculptures being a kind of story-telling, the tyres can be read as a road movie. German novelist David Wagner once made the romantic analogy of tyres touching the tarmac like a phonograph’s needle scratching on vinyl. Having this in mind it is hard not to hear the sound of the road and imagine a year’s mobility when seeing the black rubber column.

The broom can be read as an almost archetypical tool for handling waste.

Besides the dustpan it is actually the only device - except for the bare hands - that is used for handling rubbish. A used broom - and this one surely is - is affected by the (non-)qualities attributed to waste: it is filthy, sticky and stinks. But even filth and smell tell a story. This one tells us that Hans Schabus as a waste-producer is one of many, for the broom is the only thing that was left by the former owner when Schabus moved into his new atelier.

The fourth micro story and the only one actually carrying written traces is made up of the identity cards and entrance passes of exhibitions Hans Schabus participated in or visited. This is the only part within the installation that reveals Schabus’ identity as an artist and thereby personalises the Remains of the Day.

5

There is one further important discovery Schabus made during his preoccupation with rubbish: it is estimated that 90% of the waste is packaging. And this neglected material forms an interesting kind of blind spot. Although it is consciously perceived – it is actually designed to draw the uttermost attention - it redirects this whole attention towards the content. So the hidden content is seen while the packaging becomes in a way transparent and therefore invisible. By emptying and cleaning the packaging and thereby freeing it from its function, Hans Schabus, in an act of almost alchemical metamorphosis, turns the neglected byproduct into das Eigentliche. This German term can be translated as the actual or the essential and reminds one of Saint-Exupéry’s ‘Little Prince’, who stated that what is essential is invisible to the eye. Therefore it’s also a crucial shift of perception that Schabus offers to the viewer. What should be stated and stressed at this point is the fact that Schabus is not displaying a harangue on the environmental perils of a throw-away society.

It’s only at the end of this essay that I am going to mention the starting point of Schabus’ project. Asked about it, the artist 6

showed me a photograph. It’s a picture made by Dutch photographer Bas Princen and it shows a bird’s eye view of Mokattam Ridge, a part of Egypt’s capital Cairo, that is known as Garbage City. This city within the metropolis is inhabited by nearly 100,000 people, all belonging to the Christian sect of the Copts. The whole place was built up illegally and what strikes you as you look at Princen’s photograph is that every flat piece of this district is covered with waste. The reason for this is the fact that every single inhabitant of Mokattam Ridge is engaged in the garbage recycling business. The waste is cleaned and separated and, once turned into raw material, sold again. Doing this exhaustively the inhabitants of Garbage City have reached a recycling rate of 80%, with the different materials strictly divided among the different families and clans.

It should be mentioned that the Copts do this not only for a living but also to collect money to build up a megalomaniac church.

It was with this potential in mind that Hans Schabus set out to explore the nature of his own waste.

7

Collective is committed to supporting new visual art through a programme of exhibitions, projects and commissions.

Originally established as an artist run organisation in 1984, Collective is an international organisation for the production, research, presentation and distribution of contemporary art and culture with a specific focus on new visual art and practices.

We aim to foster, support and debate new work and practices in a way which is of mutual benefit to artists and audiences. See the future of visual art today.

Collective 22–28 Cockburn Street Edinburgh EH1 1NY t: +44 (0) 131 220 1260 w: www.collectivegallery.net e: mail@collectivegallery.net