Trans migrant bodies, stolen fake stones and other exercises of freedom at the ‘stateless’ exhibition documenta 141
Richard Fletcher, Associate Professor, OSU Dept. of Arts Administration, Education and Policy, fletcher.161@osu.edu
On May 22nd 2017, Spanish artist Roger Bernat and Italian academic Roberto Fratini wrote a press release on Bernat’s website (http://rogerbernat.info) addressed to the Athens-based collective LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece in response to their act of stealing a fake stone.2 The stone in question was a replica of the ‘oath stone’ or lithos of ancient Athens, which was sworn on by the king archon (the official responsible for overseeing the city’s religious laws) each year in office as well as by those citizens indicted on accusations of impiety (such as the philosopher Socrates in 399 BCE).3 The replica of the ‘oath stone’ was the central prop in Bernat’s participatory work The Place of the Thing, commissioned for documenta 14, the 5-yearly German exhibition of contemporary art, which in 2017 was split between its usual home in Kassel, with the Greek capital, Athens. Bernat and Fratini’s 13-point statement was in direct response, not so much to the act of stealing, but to the way LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece conceptualized this act in their own statement as a theft (which utilized the aesthetic of the ransom note, called Between a Rock and a Hard Place) and a video called Rockumenta posted on their Facebook page.4 The brief video depicted the group dancing around and banging on the stolen fake stone, as totem and drum, in veils, scarves and sunglasses to protect their precarious 1
This paper is part of my writing and exhibition project 2043, whisper it into a hole about the role of artists in articulating and resituating the legacies of the 2017 documenta 14 exhibition in their work. While the project focuses artistic engagement with the core theoretical frameworks of the exhibition (contemporary decolonial critique, Indigenous knowledge, feminism, minor traditions within and outside of the mainframe of modernism and postqueer politics), this paper highlights specifically postqueer politics, on which in general, see Ruffolo (2009) and the aims to ‘refluidify queer studies, to re-invent a queer theory with the capacity to intervene, disrupt, and produce (the new, the unforeseen)’, in the words of Michael O’Rourke and Noreen Giffney in their series preface (Ruffolo (2009) ix). 2 Bernat and Fratini (2017c). 3 On the lithos and Socrates’ indictment, see Plato Theaetetus 210d. For more on the ‘oath stone’ 4 See LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece (2017). The video can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/lgbtqirefugeesingreece/videos/263576050783139/ (accessed October 5, 2018) The Facebook page of LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece is https://www.facebook.com/lgbtqirefugeesingreece/ (accessed October 5, 2018). The collective has recently been featured in the British newspaper The Observer and they made a video of one of their members looking through the article (https://www.facebook.com/lgbtqirefugeesingreece/videos/327229488011849/).
status, as the text of the statement appears as subtitles. In the statement, the LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece criticized Bernat for using a ‘stone’ to give them voice (‘Your stone is supposed to give us a voice’), but by stealing it, they were able to use the stone to ventriloquize, for themselves, the LGBTQI migrant’s perspective. In a series of scenarios (each starting with the phrase ‘Your stone may be’), the collective articulates their experiences as queer and trans migrants, ranging from deportation, imprisonment, suicide and forced sex-work.5 In addition, to this ventriloquism, the collective focus on the fact that they were paid (500 Euros) to participate in Bernat’s performance. In the statement they describe this payment as an attempt to ‘purchase the participation of exoticized others’ and ‘to instrumentalize’ them. However, by stealing the stone they were symbolically taking control of their own representation, aligning the artist’s ‘empty gesture’ with how governments and NGOs are ‘pulling [their] strings’ and thus ‘cutting the strings’ and ‘dancing to [their] own tune’. Bernat and Fratini’s response statement focused on questioning the collective’s claim to ‘theft’ of the ‘stone’ and also the claims that the artists were instrumentalizing the collective and its members through giving them payment. The statement starts by articulating the aims of the project as: seeing which kind of cultural meaning, political value or even religious charisma can acquire for different collectives and individuals an archeological piece. And to see how individuals and collectives can negotiate the absolute pretext the object represents (or also in which measure they develop a kind of belief in its artificial charisma). Each one of the individuals and collectives we consulted on the project created its own idea of it.6 Bernat and Fratini then continue to critique how, in their claim to ‘stealing’ the stone made in their statement and film, LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece were under the impression that the reproduction of the ancient oath stone was a precious artwork from documenta 14. Yet, given that the stone was a fake of no value, their boasts of a theft further realized the artist’s project as compared with the other collectives who participated, this one was:
See Lynes (2018) paragraph 22: ‘[The ventriloquism] provides its authors with a playful form in which to relay the critical material conditions of migrant precarity’. 6 Bernat and Fratini (2017c). 5
the most willing to surrender to the temptation of giving some kind of symbolical value to that reproduction7 Doubling down on this critique, Bernat and Fratini describe how they had anticipated something happening to the stone and so they had made two other copies of it, further deflating the collective’s claim of theft. As for the question of payment, Bernat and Fratini write: The collective was never “purchased”. Having a budget for the project, we simply decided to share the money between all the associations and collective that willingly declared themselves interested in doing something with the stone. If we hadn’t offered any money, we would have felt that we were luring people into sharing the project for nothing.8 They continue to comment on how the collective accepted the money and ask why, if they believe the money from Documenta was tainted, did they keep it? Amid these general reactions about the claim of theft and the issue of payment, Bernat and Fratini’s statement, in terms of tone and content, was taken to represent the crux of the problem as much as a defense. This can be seen from comments by users on the blog, as well as how the statement was quoted in immediate media reactions as well as by later discussions of the episode, such as Krista Geneviève Lynes’ 2018 article ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Performative Politics and Queer Migrations’. 9 Lynes’ article culminates in a damning assessment of Bernat and Fratini’s statement: Roger Bernat responded to LGBTQI + Refugees’ action by thanking them for finally activating the work, circumscribing their intervention by claiming it as part of his own authorial intention, and thus part of the creative genius of the piece itself. His tone-deaf and revelatory statement that, having suspected something was afoot, he made two separate replicas of the stone (and thus could afford to dispense with the one LGBTQI + Refugees carried off), misses wildly the point of LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece’s critique. It is precisely Documenta’s excess, its readiness with back-up plans, extra objects, its capacity to move and circulate and disappear soon after that was at issue for activist groups in Athens. The form of politics it proposed were problematically divorced
7
Bernat and Fratini (2017c). Bernat and Fratini (2017c). 9 Lynes (2018). There are no page numbers, so when directing you to specific places I use the numbered paragraphs. 8
from the material conditions and social relations on the ground in Athens. Rather than engaging practices of critical and creative displacement (as Artists Against Evictions and LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece did), his work was more firmly embedded in structures of mobility and flexibility with the global art market.10 To understand how Lynes reaches this reading of the statement, we need to briefly go through the main points of her argument. Her article begins by characterizing documenta 14 and its working title “Learning from Athens” as risking the instrumentalization of ‘Greek resistance movements, precarious populations called upon to participate in art actions throughout the city’, at the same time as ‘engaging directly in questions of identity, culture and resistance under the constraints of European neoliberal economic order’.11 Focusing on how local Athenian and Greek artists and activists resisted the ‘occupation’ of Athens by Documenta, through statements (e.g. by the group Artists Against Evictions) and graffiti (e.g. one that reads DEAR DOCUMENTA: I REFUSE TO EXOTICIZE MYSELF TO INCREASE YOUR CULTURAL CAPITAL), Lynes follows Judith Butler (specifically in her essay ‘Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street’) in emphasizing how precarious bodies operate in alliance, across democratic systems and aesthetics, both in terms of their position in public places, their role in participation and the distribution of their positions online, as a means to resist their occupation, displacement and destruction. In this context, the Bernat/LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece episode not only compounds the neocolonial and privileged incursion of the German mega exhibition into Athenian space in crisis and debt, but also the direct and spirited resistance to occupation, displacement and destruction by representatives of a local precarious population of queer and trans migrants.12 While Lynes does make some passing observations as to the nature of Bernat’s project, a more vital context for her solidarity with the actions of LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece is to embed their ‘performative displacement’ within a tradition of ‘feminist and queer aesthetic precedents’, ranging from Lynda Benglis’ iconic 1974 Artforum ad to Adrian Piper’s Mythic
10
Lynes (2018) paragraph 29. Lynes (2018) paragraph 6. 12 Although it only appears briefly, the Bernat/LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece episode, and the latter’s statement, is used by Lagios, Lekka and Panoutsopoulos (2018) to introduce their work on borders, bodies and crises. 11
Beings series.13 The performance, statement and video of LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece share with these works ‘both an embodied performative intervention’ and ‘a textual supplement’, whose distribution online is key for generating solidarity for and challenge to the ‘presumed racial, sexual, and gendered subject of art and media cultures’.14 In a detailed account of the statement and video within other activities and networks of LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece, as gleaned from their Facebook page, Lynes argues how they expose ‘the gulf between Documenta’s public actions’ and ‘their interventions’(as well as Artists Against Evictions). It is following this analyses that Lynes turns to Bernat and Fratini’s statement (in the passage I quoted above), and then ends her article by making the simple juxtaposition between the object in Bernat’s work and the body of the queer migrant, wherein the action of LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece carries out their own displacement of Bernat’s object’s ‘right to circulate’ – by kidnapping it – which in turn mobilized their own rights ‘to persist, to survive, and to flourish’.15 From this brief summary of Lynes’ discussion of the Bernat/LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece episode it may not seem immediately apparent that the curators and artists of documenta 14 were also wrestling with the similar issues as the local Athens activists and artistic collectives. However, we cannot underestimate the power of the institution of Documenta that loomed large for those that are a part of it, as much as for those who oppose it or find themselves instrumentalized by it. In what remains of this short paper, I want to turn first to the Curator of Public Programs, philosopher and trans activist Paul. B. Preciado and then, finally, back to Roger Bernat and Roberto Fratini, specifically to the statements about their work that followed the controversy and which were not part of Lynes’ analysis. In doing this, I am not weighing in on the controversy between Bernat and LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece so as to side with the artist of the institution of Documenta. I am in agreement with Lynes’ description of the tone-deaf statement and blunt comments (and could go further e.g. when Bernat describes the collective’s reaction as ‘hysterical’ and attacking them for their ‘victimhood’). Instead, as someone who is working on the role of artists in interpreting and resituating the legacies of documenta 14, I am committed to fleshing out the context for the controversy that noisily hit the headlines as well as
13
Lynes (2018) paragraph 23. Note that Preciado (2017b) 126-130 describes the impact of Benglis’ ad on his transition. 14 Lynes (2018) paragraph 23. 15 Lynes (2018) paragraph 30.
to highlight its quieter aftermath, to show how the failures of all involved (LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece, Bernat and the organizers of documenta 14) are ones that may unite more than separate them in terms of postqueer politics, specifically the place of queer and trans migration within them. Paul B. Preciado, in an essay about the legal process of his own gender reassignment compares his rights as a trans person to those of migrants or refugees, using the Greek word apatride, meaning ‘stateless’.16 In an article, written to coincide with the opening of the exhibition documenta 14 in April 2017, for which he was Curator of Public Programs, Preciado uses the same Greek word to describe the exhibition as whole, on account of its migration from its usual home in Kassel, Germany, to Athens, Greece, the center of the European debt and refugee crisis.17 Preciado’s article and its claim to documenta 14’s ‘stateless’ condition has been cited in two very different, but equally critical reviews of the exhibition, both of which attacked Germany’s cultural and fiscal incursion into Greece as a neocolonial gesture.18 One of these reviews indirectly references the action of LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece and there is a clear affinity between their action, Lynes’ article and these negative reviews of documenta 14. Yet as with many criticisms of the exhibition and its aims, they rely on a necessarily hasty and superficial engagement with the work of the curators and artists of documenta 14. For example, nowhere does the characterization of the exhibition as apatride deal with the specifics of either Preciado’s own experience as a trans man or of the projects that he oversaw that were engaged with and creatively activated queer and trans experience of artists and other invited participants to documenta 14. It was Preciado, along with documenta 14 Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk, who commissioned Roger Bernat’s The Place of the Thing. In light of how LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece intervened in the work and how it became the basis for Lynes’ article about performative politics and queer migration, it is well worth asking how did Preciado make sense of Bernat’s work as a queer and trans activist? Furthermore, was there something about Bernat’s project that demonstrated the ‘stateless’ apatride nature of both trans and migrant identity? While there are no direct statements by Preciado to answer these questions (although in future research I want to interview him), if we read Preciado’s entry on Bernat in the documenta
16
Preciado (2017b) 124-125. Preciado (2017a). 18 Fokianaki and Varoufakis (2017) and Demos (2017). 17
14 publication, the documenta 14 Daybook, we can find the idea of the ‘stateless’ in intimated as part of the erasure of difference within the theatrical form. Writing about an earlier work by Bernat called Domini Public (Public space), in which attendees wear headphones that give them instructions as to how to act as they cross a square filled with other pedestrians, Preciado notes: Rather than pandering to a fiction of a category of actors distinct from the rest of us, the piece isolates its participants and confronts them with the responsibility of having to perform, while also constructing an ephemeral social architecture.19 At the same time as the moment of the dissolution of drama (i.e. the fiction of the actor), such dissolution becomes a generalization of the theatrical device, as there can be no theater because theater is everywhere (e.g. in a group of pedestrians crossing a square). This dual-action process of theatrical dissolution and generalization is at the heart of Preciado’s uniting of the trans and migrant experience before the law in terms of what makes a body legal (which is as much a fiction as that of the actor in a theatrical setting). At the same time as the moment of the dissolution of the legal body (whether through gender transitioning or refugee status), such dissolution becomes a generalization of the legal body, whereby there can be no legal body because legal bodies are everywhere (we are all legal). Put another way, we can agree with Preciado in his piece about his own transition that the trans and migrant body is what ‘puts them in a position of high social vulnerability’.20 This is clear from the action and statement of LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece. However, in the request for recognition, that is, to be treated as subjects (‘rocks can’t talk, but we can’), they are implicated in their own subjugation. (This could be the basis for the statement by Bernat that they are limited to their own victimization CHECK). At the same time, what Bernat misses in their statement is their own version of dissolution and generalization in the form of dance that bridges the visual elements of the video and the statement (‘we dance to our own music’). In short, Bernat misses the sure signs of an exercise of freedom. But what would the trading of recognition and subjugation for dissolution and generalization look like? This is the precise impasse between the dueling statements of Bernat and LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece. Yet there the solution comes when Bernat’s project, the
19 20
Preciado (2017c) August 9. Preciado (2017b) 125.
drama of the fake rock and its journey, whereby in seeking recognition (and its accompanying subjugation) instead it undergoes a process of dissolution and generalization at the hands of Documenta (the institution, not the specific instantiation of documenta 14) and E-Bay. Let me explain. After Athens and after the drama of the theft episode, Bernat and Fratini made two other statements (one on Bernat’s website and one in response to an email request by me – see Appendix A) that describe the continuation of their project in Kassel as a failure in several ways. The first of these statements called ‘Failure as a State of Grace (D14/4)’ of September 12, 2017, described how the intention to bury the fake ‘oath stone’ at the historical Thingplatz in Landau (Wolfhagen), near Kassel, would not happen. One reason for this, Bernat and Fratini explain, was how the work was received by its audience in Germany during its time placed in the front garden of the Museum für Sepulkralkultur. They write: The stone was welcomed by Documenta’s audience, who participated in the project with dedication and candour not shown beforehand by any other collective. (Their commitment was so zealous that anonymous graffiti appeared on it denouncing the falsity of a plastic stone!). And it was by taking part unreservedly that the audience at Documenta made the project fail.21 Given this reaction that contributed to the project’s failure, Bernat and Fratini decided to bury the stone elsewhere: The spectators at Documenta deserve a ceremony in line with their convictions. Let us therefore bury the stone on e-bay. Let the sovereign collective of Documenta – its audience – free itself from the idols that sustain it. Let the true price “top” the false value.22 When I sent Bernat an email asking what happened to the sale of the Kassel stone on E-Bay, I received a statement from both him and Fratini that explained how they were not even able to put
21 22
Bernat and Fratini (2017d) Bernat and Fratini (2017d)
the stone for sale as it was rejected by E-Bay as well! (You can read the whole statement they sent to me as Appendix A below). Here is the pertinent section: Since value is the fiction, and since the main protocol of fiction is presently the concept of Reality (Documenta is somehow the big Reality Show of Contemporary Art), the rule of the market is to maintain the belief that the price still corresponds to some measurable grade of reality (in the case of artistic stuff, this intangible reality is the work of discourse, which supports and grants for the fluctuations of prices). E-bay is the most “silent” of cemeteries: there are no speeches, here, to justify the gap between the material reality and the price: a price of 1 Euro will plainly utter that the object has no artistic meaning, no material value, no history, no beauty, no use. It literally is worth so little that it doesn’t even have any right to be on E-bay (that’s why E-bay refused it). Not even the cold, brief explanation of this involvement in the documenta 14 allowed the stone to recover the “aura” that the low price had contributed to eliminate so definitively, and to perform the fiction of a “good bargain”. The reason is that Documenta and E-Bay are different theaters of similar performances: actually, both performances (art as a market, and market as an art) are so similar that any superposition, any active “crossing” of their protocols will be considered as a betrayal of all the principles of reality: no theatrical consumer would consume the object of its hypocrisy as an object; no material consumer would consider a fiction as an object worth to be consumed.23
In light of these failures, at Kassel and on E-Bay, if we return to Lynes’ article, we can find elements that she traced in the work of LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece within the full-scope of Bernat’s project. For example, Lynes emphasizes how bodies operates across democratic systems and aesthetics, both in terms of their position in public places, their role in participation and distribution methods. When we add the Kassel and E-Bay episodes to the performances in Athens, when Bernat invied various collectives and individuals to engage with and carry the ‘oath stone’, from archaeologists to school children, across numerous sites including schools, embassies, public squares and even the middle of roads, we can see more clearly how Bernat instumentalized the fake rock to bring attention to the bodies of the participants (including the 23
Bernat and Fratini (2018)
spectators in Kassel and the E-Bay community) rather than the rock, to show ‘how bodies will be supported in the world’ (to share a Judith Butler from Lynes’ essay).24 Another example is how Lynes pays attention to ideas of occupation and displacement within the art of performative politics across urban space. For Bernat’s whole project, the questioning of the art object as thing, chimes with Lynes’ quotation of art historian Darby English’s description of an art that ‘gives things-in-relation a capacity to inform that no other framework can’. You could even take Lynes’ follow-up statement as describing Bernat’s work: English’s attention to “things in relation” is a key feminist, queer, and anti-racist question for thinking struggles over public space, and for thinking the potential for artistic practice in relation to them in the present conjuncture. While these correspondences between Lynes’ argument and the whole of Bernat’s project may seem to leave behind the pressing question of the precarity of LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece, the question of failure that comes to the fore, takes on a vital significance. In “Voices of Trans and Queer Politics in the Mediterranean”, one of the sessions of The Parliament of Bodies organized by Paul B. Preciado in September 2016, in Athens called 34 Exercises of Freedom, members of the Athens Museum of Queer Art spoke about their work and how it related to the upcoming documenta 14 exhibition. One member stated the following, which I want to present as evidence for the bridging of Bernat and LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece in terms of failure: We are, therefore, an "art museum" that does not converse with authorities and established subjects. We are dealing with bodies. We stand in front of all these gaps in narrative and imagine possible fields of action. For the bodies the crowd gives them only when it comes to attacking them. To speak of bodies that, like me, and much more than me, cannot do it. We know that we cannot produce majority meanings, nor is there space for us in the predominant narratives. We are close to what Jack Halberstam says when he talks about the Queer Art of Failure. Failure as a synonym for freedom. I want to play and I want to fail. Let's play and let's get together.25
24
See Lynes (2018) paragraph 15 This is a GoogleTranslate version of their statement on their website, which is a transcript of what was spoken at the event. 25
This reference to the work of queer and trans scholar Halberstam (who was speaking at the same event) and specifically his book The Queer Art of Failure, offers a way to re-engage Bernat’s work, especially when he too embraces failure as what he dubs the ‘state of grace’ of the project. To conclude with a question: how can we communicate the failure of Bernat’s project as means for generating solidarity with precarious populations of queer and trans migrants (in Greece and beyond)? This paper is a modest start and as Halberstam writes: ‘Failure loves company’, so let’s bring artists and activists together. Works Cited Bernat, Roger and Roberto Fratini (2017a) ‘The Place of the Thing (D14/1)’ website, accessed October 5, 2018) -
(2017b) ‘Documenta Invites You To Visit (D14/2)’ website accessed October 5, 2018.
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(2017c) ‘Let’s Put Things In Its Place (D14/3)’, website accessed October 5, 2018.
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(2017d) ‘Failure as a State of Grace (D14/4)’ website, accessed October 5, 2018.
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(2018) ‘Oath Stone on E-Bay’, unpublished email to author (see Appendix A below)
Demos, T J (2017) ‘Learning from documenta 14: Athens, Post-Democracy, and Decolonisation’, Third Text Online. Fokianaki, iLiana and Yanis Varoufakis (2017) ‘“We Come Bearing Gifts”—iLiana Fokianaki and Yanis Varoufakis on Documenta 14 Athens’, e-flux conversations, June 2017. Halberstam, Jack (2011) The Queer Art of Failure. Lagios, Thanasis, Vasia Lekka and Grigoris Panoutsopoulos (2018) Borders, Bodies and Narratives of Crisis in Europe. LGBTQI + Refugees in Greece (2017) ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place’, public statement, Twitter, May 21, 2017. Lynes, Krista Genevieve (2018) ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Performative Politics and Queer Migrations’ Ada New Media Review, issue 14. Preciado, Paul B. (2017a) ‘The Apatride Exhibition’, e-flux conversations, April 2017. -
(2017b) ‘My Body Doesn’t Exist’, in The documenta 14 Reader, 117-134.
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(2017c) ‘Roger Bernat’, Documenta 14 Daybook, August 9.
Ruffolo, David V. (2009) Post-Queer Politics.
Appendix A Email sent from Roger Bernat and Roberto Fratini to Minus Plato (aka Richard Fletcher) on September 27, 2018:
The stone was buried on E-Bay because E-bay is the last and ultimate cemetery of reality as a value. De-realization is the fundamental aim of Zombie capitalism; and since in a totalitarian system not even death has its own right to be considered the deaf portion of reality which disavow the promises of value, by transforming dead things into living merchandise, E-bay also performs in the most paradoxical way the last consequences of the totalitarian Weltansschaung: the recycling of the dead. The stone was buried on E-Bay because it’s a stone, and all the stones are potentially tombstones. The stone was buried on E-Bay because it’s a fake stone, and each tombstone is somehow a fake. The stone was buried on E-Bay because of a totally superimposed pretension of being a work of art, and each work of art comes to be the tombstone it was at the origins of the concept of art. It was buried on and under E-Bay, because it’s the fake version of a work of art as a fake, and nevertheless the model it endures is the one of an ancient Oath Stone. What was never truly alive (not even as a work of living art - if you consider it in a plastic perspective -, and not even as a work of live art - if you consider it as a performance), cannot be truly dead. In this sense, the stone was “really” the most pathetic of theatrical décors. No one buys second hand décors on E-bay. And the concept of “authentic scenography” is paradoxical in itself. Our stone is strictly trash. And maybe its only testament is the malicious declaration that, in the present state of the artistic market, any work of art is substantially the décor of an ideological fiction. For that same reason, any work of art is simply trash, depending on where you decide to bury it, and on the price you put onto it. The lowest price is the price you put onto trash. Nevertheless, that price is not less symbolical than the delirious operation of overpricing which propulses the ideological performance of artistic markets. Since value is the fiction, and since the main protocol of fiction is presently the concept of Reality (Documenta is somehow the big Reality Show of Contemporary Art), the rule of the market is to maintain the belief that the price still corresponds to some measurable grade of reality (in the case of artistic stuff, this intangible reality is the work of discourse, which supports and grants for the fluctuations of prices). E-bay is the most “silent” of cemeteries: there are no speeches, here, to justify the gap between the material reality and the price: a price of 1 Euro will plainly utter that the object has no artistic
meaning, no material value, no history, no beauty, no use. It literally worths so little that it doesn’t even have any right to be on E-bay (that’s why E-bay refused it). Not even the cold, brief explanation of this involvement in the Documenta 14 allowed the stone to recover the “aura” that the low price had contributed to eliminate so definitively, and to perform the fiction of a “good bargain”. The reason is that Documenta and E-Bay are different theaters of similar performances: actually, both performances (art as a market, and market as an art) are so similar that any superposition, any active “crossing” of their protocols will be considered as a betrayal of all the principles of reality: no theatrical consumer would consume the object of its hypocrisy as an object; no material consumer would consider a fiction as an object worth to be consumed. The price is too low for the first, and too high for the second; the corpse of the stone is more naked than any king; and once the king is dead, the only valuable thing about him are suddenly its dismissed dresses (existing or not). FOOTNOTE: At this time there are three oath stones. The one that was rejected by Ebay, who remains in the garden of Joachim Schleißing, spokesman for a neighborhood association in Kassel. The one that was "stolen" by the LGBTI + refugee association, which is located in the association's courtyard, as can be seen in a publication of its FB. And finally, the one that never moved from its site, which is located in the part not accessible to the public of the Athenian Agora, next to the train tracks, visible from the ring road of the Agora.