MONO/e Staedy Rise

STEADY RISE (steady rise & continuous increase)

2006 Curatorial intervention Mixed media Kaskadenkondensator, Projektraum für aktuelle Kunst und Performance, Basel

Haus am Gern was invited to do a performance at Off Space Kaskadenkondensator (Cascading Condenser) in the former Warteck brewery in Basel on the theme of «Organ+».

Haus am Gern opted for «organisation».

Organisation means the planning and execution of a project. STEADY RISE exemplified the «organisation» of the organisation of an exhibition about the organisation of an organisation in the context of KasKo and its team.

As a basic element, Haus am Gern installed a heating stove, whose over 50-meter-long chimney pipe crossed the exhibition space, providing the exhibition’s structure and, like an organisational chart, guided the visitors to various stations. The stove was lit for the opening event and kept burning throughout the three weeks of the exhibition. The KasKo team had to keep the fire going.

Four plinth-like positions were built into the structure. In the course of the exhibition, objects were added. Haus am Gern delegated the «Organisation» (or requisitioning) of those objects. Each plinth was equipped with a dispenser containing «game cards» that explained the objects.

Credits Host

Kaskadenkondensator, Basel Anna Schürch Performances

Peter Vittali Jérôme Bichsel Cédric Henny Tilo Steireif Management Kaskadenkondensator Anna Schürch Judith Huber Irene Maag Daniel Johann Cornelius Grimm Installation

Georg Traber Preservation

Natural History Museum Basel Christoph Meier Pellet oven FRANK Modell C

TIBA AG, Bubendorf Chocolate Coins

Aeschbach Chocolatier AG, Cham

1) “Organisation” of a clarification Haus am Gern commissioned the Basel graduate engineer and performance artist, Dr. Peter Vittali, to compose a piece of music which was to feature a humming voice and the text, KEY CRITERIA OF A LIVING SYSTEM by Fritjof Capra 1. Its first performance was scheduled for the opening event.

However, he did not in the least comply with the instructions. All that remained of Dr. Peter Vittali’s performance 2 in the exhibition was a carbonised model of the exhibition space.

The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, New York: Anchor, 1996

1

2

see below

EXPLANATION OF AN ORGANISATION Lecture for the opening of the exhibition Steady Rise by Haus am Gern, Kaskadenkondensator Basel, 2006

Steady Rise is the new exhibition by Haus am Gern, directed

by Barbara Meyer Cesta and Rudolf Steiner, as part of the event series Organ+ at Kaskadenkondensator.

Yesterday evening, when my office received notice of the upcoming exhibition opening, it was immediately clear that we would take on this case.

We began with a thorough analysis of the concept material, which was delivered to us in a sealed envelope. The envelope contained a red book entitled Methods of Systems Theory and a green folder with a four page concept outline.

The folder was marked with the logo of the YRA, the Young Responsible Artists. The concept paper included the following description of the project:

THE CONCEPT PAPER OVEN The basic element is an oven. The fire will be lit at the opening and shall be maintained by the management and the public.

HUMMING A specified spoken text about systems theory will be accompanied by a humming voice. This humming will be performed at the opening.

ANIMAL In a kind of surgical procedure, the management will sew an animal using fresh parts from the market. The animal will then be displayed in a formaldehyde container.

BEER On 22 January, beer will be brewed at KasKo.

Unveil the model  As Art Process Inspector for Haus am Gern, it is my task to illuminate this concept and demonstrate its organisation.

For this reason we reconstructed the site-specific installation Steady Rise as a rough model. It shows the outline of Kaskadenkondensator, the exhibition space with the oven and the documentation centre. The model is not to scale.

SYSTEMS THEORY The term “steady rise” implies a continuous ascent and relates to a concept from systems theory. We read the following in the introduction to the red book:

Model of the exhibition at Kaskadenkondensator

Systems theory is today considered an important method of explaining causality in natural sciences and art. It may be applied to steady systems. Such systems are extant in most areas of application. In exceptional cases, the real circum stances can be approximately traced to such systems. The starting point is an operational representation of the relationship between cause and effect with reference to models. Steady Rise is also a case of causality. Material is burnt in an oven, causing air to heat up. The warm air crosses the space, surges past the audience, cools down and finally flows out into the open. Our starting point is therefore an on / off relationship between warm and cold air.

THE DESIRE go to model and set it alight  The artist has a desperate, burning desire that catches fire and bursts into flames. Her or his desire is primal, the artists was born as a bundle of instincts, screamed hunger and slept for hours. This primal bundle was warm and began to scream and to shit and was domesticated and socialised by means of language. The young artist’s wishful desire was presented hesitantly at first, reaching its environment as so much hot air. The artist stokes his desire, warming the air, which prowls around the empathic audience like an animal around the hot brew. He fires up his desire and asks the audience to feed it. The bundle of primal appetites within him, his inner shitting, dirty bastard of a primal bundle, was shaped and organised through language. Language splits the inside from the outside and thus the inner pig is born.

A torn, animalistic bundle, brought down by attempts to shape it, and bedded in formaldehyde. But the formaldehyde tastes disgusting and is ice cold; desire is joyful and its euphoria lives as a collective dream, as warm air, and it is constantly fed. Steady feed. The artist parts his desire, is split in language and cuts the thread to the umbilical cord where he dangled for a moment as a bundle of instincts – and later as a pet pig with an inner bastard.

OF MODELS AND REALITY to the front 

We can approximately trace the model to real circumstances. Steady Rise is a spatially staged image of the personality of the artists. Artists are born like other people, without language and as pure bundles of instincts, without inhibitions or taboos. The domestication of man begins from birth and this development is bound up with language, with the world of symbols and signs. Language gradually represses this lack of inhibition. This process of repression splits the personality into two parts.

One part lives in the socialised world of society, while the other part remains in a wild world of instinctual drives and motivations. This partition leaves a wound behind and is experienced as suffering. Steady Rise shows us that this wound may be healed by sewing or humming. The artist is a human being, whose most burning desire is the healing of this wound. He brews up desire, splits the wood in the oven and lets his desire flow into the wound.

The artist has a desperate, burning desire

FEAR go to model  But the flow constantly threatens to dry up and the artist is afraid that his desire might grow cold and be wasted. His brew flows down the gutter as fear, flows into the pig sty, past the dirty bastards, mingles with cold coffee and is lost in the sand. The artist leaves his audience cold and pours beer onto open wounds. The artist is split; his organ+ is amputated and preserved. The audience doesn’t care for the artist, his desire has petrified, the oven goes out, the beer is gone. The artist freezes to death and loses his limbs. The limbs float in formaldehyde, lost downstream, are sewed together again and sit by the warm oven. Behind them a dog that hums and chews on an organ+.

SUMMARY fire out, step forward  My short analysis based on systems theory demonstrates that the piece Steady Rise is an operational representation of the complex desire of the artist: the artist has the burning wish to make contact with the prelinguistic state immediately prior to birth. There he suspects the primal motivation for his work. But this wish is studded with fear, for the artist fears his dependence on the warmth of the audience to point him on his way to reaching the desired state. This fear extinguishes his desire. He tries to trick his fear by fingering others’ wounds; being feeds on organ+ and a soliloquy hums in its own language+. to the model, uncover the documentation center 

... the artist is afraid that his desire will grow cold ….

However, this desperate wish is itself bound to language, to that very organisation which split the human being from the primal force of his bundled instincts. The burning wish itself is finally revealed as a pipe dream, an illusion. The testimonies of many such pipe dreams are stored here in the documentation center.

OUTLOOK points finger to model, covers up completely  The topic of illusion and hallucination will, by the way, be the subject of my next lecture. It will take place on 3rd February at Kunstverein Konstanz, on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Lluzi by artist Cristina Ohlmer from Freiburg. exit left 

2) “Organisation” of a dead animal Haus am Gern invited the Lausanne artist trio, Bichsel / Henny / Steireif to do their performance, OPERATION. Under their supervision and in the course of three hours, the KasKo management assembled an animal from market-fresh animal organs and body parts. The object was subsequently preserved and integrated into the exhibition.

With the assistance of a white mouse, Irene Maag, Judit Huber and Anna Sch端rch of the Kaskadenkondensator management built an animal using market-fresh ingredients. The results were then analysed at a panel discussion.

3) “Organisation� of turbidity Haus am Gern commissioned master brewer Grimm to hold a seminar on the brewing of beer. All the directors of the museums in Basel were personally invited to attend. Only one of them did so, ingesting a large quantity of beer in the process. The freshly-brewed beer was left to ferment during the exhibition. It tasted excellent.

Beat Gugger, exhibition-maker René Zäch, artist Berta Feer Zäch, special needs educator Prof. Dr. Christian A. Meyer, director of the Natural History Museum Basel Franz Dodel, writer Beer brewing master and seminar instructor Daniel Grimm (in lederhosen)

4) “Organisation” of a specific sum Haus am Gern invested the project budget of CHF 2 000 into some 150 kg of chocolate dollars wrapped in gold foil. In the course of STEADY RISE, the dollars were stacked to make a tall tower according to the instructions on the “game card” – or were eaten.