Speaker

Stefan Bruggemann will not be present at the opening of his exhibition.

Stefan Bruggemann will be present at the opening of his exhibition.

How can both statements be true at once? It might be said such propositions are contradictory, and yet, while one might not be able to be in two places at once, it is arguable that the invocation of one thing always implies another. So, the presence of Stefan Bruggemann implies his absence and vice versa.
Further, what if the artist were replaced by a surrogate who might take his place for the occasion of the opening? Not in the way of a lookalike, a visual impostor, or a consummate actor who might learn the artist's lines and imitate his voice, but instead as someone who would represent him in some way. And if so, what exactly would be represented? Clearly the artist's work, which is not visible in the gallery, since it is a soundpiece, an audible reading out of a lengthy list of showtitles, represents itself. Here sound takes the place of the visual. We note this distinct lack of visual presence but are assuaged by work's manifestation in another form. In this way, the artwork, already remade in another medium can be said to take the place of the absent artist. Thus the artist is present in person through the presence of an other, being represented at the opening by a writer. The writer will not take his place literally, but will stand in for the artist as a speaker or spokesperson, being neither the same, nor second best.
Stefan Bruggemann's work will be heard and not seen while Stefan Bruggemann will be heard.
But he will be missed.

Nico de Oliveira, 2010.




Words don't come easy (live)
Nicolas de Oliveira, João Mourão e | and Luís Silva
29.04. 2010
Kunsthalle Lissabon

Nicolas de Oliveira (NdO): I will speak in English because I'm here representing Stefan Brüggemann and since he doesn't speak Portuguese I must speak in English. Before saying something about Stefan's work, I ought to say something about the problem of presence and the problem of absence. In fact, presence is never a problem: if the person you're expecting is already present, you're not going to ask him or her “what are you doing here?” because you're expecting them. With the reverse case, something else happens: you ask “where are you? why didn't you come?”. In other words, we need to explain. When there is an absence there is a need for explanation, always. This need for explanation, which connects very strongly with Stefan's work, is very interesting because it gives us something to say, to fill that void with. An absence is a kind of void, in the sense of how Georges Perec might talk about it. We cannot exactly talk about the void but about all that surrounds it, that lives around it. The void is explained, in a room for example, by the very walls that surround it, which hold the space within them. The space in itself has no definition, other than through the explanation of the walls. This expectation of presence is endemic to all contemporary art, but particularly to contemporary art that comes after the legacy of the avant-garde, and more specifically, since conceptual art. Stefan Brüggemann's work, of course, comments on the absence of conceptual art, because conceptual art no longer exists. It existed once, but it no longer exists. So what do we put in its place? What does Stefan put in its place? One might say that he re-presents something which is absent, and in this absence what he represents is remarkably similar to that which once was. In the early part of his career, and Stefan started becoming relatively known as a very young artist, people would doubt that he had the possibility, the presence and the power to explain the absence of conceptual art. The argument might have been that he was essentially re-hashing it because he had no ideas, so he was just representing that which conceptual artists presented before. That was never Stefan's project. Instead, his project was to represent the absence of something.
Stefan's work also comments on the hoax that is art. We all know that conceptual art led to a kind of hoaxing, of fakeness, a sort of phoniness that deals with this notion of oscillation: is it? isn't it? Is it present? Is it absent? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it fantastic? Is it rubbish? And in fact, since we are talking about conceptual art, all of our concepts are indeed made up of stages, of oscillations between opposites. It's like a tuning fork, it causes a sound between two sounds, it tunes itself in some way. And you might therefore say that Stefan's work is, in some sense, an oscillation between these different possibilities and it can be, in that sense, very repetitive, but repetition is the brother or sister of absence. Like absence, in repetition there is something to talk about. When we repeat something, we seem to vaguely recognize, to remember somehow. We feel we've heard something before, so we compare the then and the now and this, of course, gives us much to talk about, it is a problematic that is delicious. On the contrary, if something is too present it makes us mute, there is nothing to say, words suddenly fail us. Stefan is very aware of the fact that his work, in some sense, has already existed, it plays and claims ownership of a certain kind of familiarity.

Luis Silva (LS): É interessante que tenhas apresentado o trabalho do Stefan dessa maneira, em termos da representação da ausência. A representação da ausência é, à partida, um projecto falhado na medida em que a ausência é sempre a presença dela própria e parece-me que o Stefan joga com essa impossibilidade de representação do que não está lá. A partir do momento em que se tenta abordar a ausência, ela imediatamente transforma-se em presença, numa espécie de auto-reificação do que não está la. Assim, em vez da dicotomia presença-ausência, talvez seja mais uma questão de negatividade. Tu usaste uma série de palavras para descrever o trabalho do Stefan, como lies, hoax, absence, fake, phony, entre outras, e todas elas podem ser, de alguma forma, ligadas por esta ideia de negatividade. Negativo, neste sentido, é diferente da ausência, ainda que a inclua e esteja ligado a ela, mas mais importante, esta negatividade já não é auto-reificante. Um exemplo muito claro dessa auto-reificação consiste exactamente no espaço da Kunsthalle Lissabon: a sala encontra-se vazia, não contém nenhum objecto (mais tarde, depois desta conversa e quando a inauguração começar, a peça vai estar a funcionar) mas, no entanto, esta ausência é uma presença e parece-me que a tentativa de definição da ausência, ao impor-lhe limites, transforma-a em algo contido e, dessa forma em algo existente e presente. O Stefan joga muito bem com esta relação entre presença e ausência, com o vazio que se torna omnipresente. Mas joga também com outros tópicos, como o legado da arte conceptual, como referiste, e quando disseste que a arte conceptual só existiu em determinado ponto, eu gostava de radicalizar o teu comentário da breve existência da arte conceptual e perguntar-te se ela, na realidade, alguma vez existiu. Será que o projecto da arte conceptual não falhou imediatamente a partir do momento em que se constituiu? Ainda que a arte conceptual tenha surgido como reacção às estratégias de objectificação da prática artística, foi automaticamente comodificada e, nesse sentido, os pressupostos que a enformaram... falharam, ou nunca aconteceram realmente... e mais uma vez, o Stefan joga com isso, com a citação do projecto falhado que é a arte conceptual, levando-o ao extremo, usando simultaneamente as estratégias da arte conceptual e as estratégias que levaram ao fracasso do projecto da arte conceptual. Esse projecto pode ser visto à luz da ingenuidade, partiu de uma posição de boa-fé, o do Stefan não. O Stefan inscreve-se explicitamente numa prática de comodificação do conceptual e o seu trabalho é prática conceptual e estratégia de marketing ao mesmo tempo.

NdO: It is very interesting, and provocative, to say that perhaps conceptual art never existed. You might even go further to say that conceptual art only existed as a concept before it existed, because the moment it came into being, it ceased to be conceptual. If we are truly going to say that the germination of the idea, and Henry Flynt's original four stages or dictums on conceptual art were to state that there was indeed to be no object, only the idea. The moment that an object actually arrives, even as a surrogate, a stand-in (and since we're talking about stand-ins, this is an interesting discussion), Flynt argues, at that point it ceases to be what it's attempting to be. In other words, perhaps the most interesting thing to say about that is that conceptual art exists only before it exists. It is an anterior position and therefore becomes automatically historical, either as a thing or as a failure, the moment it comes into being.
I had a very interesting conversation with an American art historian, Howard Schweizer, who wrote a wonderful book called On Waiting. He argued, very persuasively, like the issue you were raising, that the condition of waiting is a condition of suspension. We see this in so many wonderful pieces of work, films, plays... Waiting for Godot springs to mind, of course, Samuel Beckett... But waiting as a suspension is a void; the moment that, once waiting, you light up a cigarette, you are no longer waiting, you are smoking a cigarette. Schweizer argues that waiting is a very precarious, very brittle, very disembodied position. And there is a poetic argument for Stefan's work that, likewise, it is not about something solid, but about its opposite and perhaps that's why we're discussing the notion of absence. Despite the hard-edged condition of Stefan's work, the continuous use of the most banal of both statements and typefaces, on and on and on, it has a certain poetic notion to it.

João Mourão (JM): Quando falas destes momentos de espera penso imediatamente num dos tópicos que o Stefan aborda, o nothing, o nada, cujo exemplos mais marcantes serão as Nothing Boxes ou o vídeo A Production of Nothing, em que escreveste, com ele, o guião. Essa ideia do nothing tem muito a ver com a ideia do waiting, e o momento em que estás à espera do nada, em que esperas mas não sabes exactamente do que estás à espera. Essa quase negação de conteúdo, que é a única maneira de manter a forma (da espera, ou da ausência) intacta, leva-nos, no trabalho do Stefan, a estes momentos de suspensão...

LS: Não acho que haja uma negação de conteúdo. Acho que há, antes, uma postura crítica relativamente à dicotomia possibilidade – impossibilidade de acesso a um conteúdo. As coisas estão lá e não estão lá. As caixas são caixas; são something apesar de dizerem, elas próprias que são nothing. Esse nothing que de alguma forma é a ausência de conteúdo, pelo simples facto de ser apresentado como tal, torna-se em something, através de uma forma difusa de dupla negação... Existe sempre a questão do ser ou não ser. Mais do que simplesmente negar, é articular a contradição de algo ser o que não é, ou ser e não ser, simultaneamente...

JM: Exactamente, o facto de a caixa ser apresentada como nada já é, em si, alguma coisa.

LS: …para pensares em alguma coisa tens que pensar noutra coisa; para encontrares A, talvez seja melhor começares pelo B, o C e o D, porque assim tens noção do que falta, do que não está lá, simplesmente através daquilo que já sabes. É esta noção de circular à volta de uma coisa, de definir algo pela enunciação do que não constitui essa coisa, mas que define as suas fronteiras, bem como a redução das dicotomias, as coisas não serem brancas ou pretas, presentes ou ausentes, políticas ou comerciais. E o Stefan, ao mostrar que algo pode ser uma coisa e o seu oposto ao mesmo tempo, por muito problemático que isso possa ser, recusa uma forma de pensamento dicotómico. E um bom exemplo é, que ele, neste momento, está presente, e também não está.

NdO: I agree with you both that the presentation of nothing on one level is impossible, but in fact, maybe it's good to make an analogy via mathematics, particularly via the concept of zero. Zero isn't a number, it is a concept, one that activates others. It is argued that zero is what we call a placeholder in the sense of when you add a zero after 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, you are suspending the previous numbers and jumping to the next order. So all that zero does is holding the place for all the other numbers to arrive and this is, precisely, a description of nothingness. Nothingness holds the space for whatever else that arrives and, in fact, nothingness also introduces, once again mathematically, the idea of infinity. One of the wonderful descriptions I once heard about what's infinity happened while I was driving my car in the morning to work. A computer scientist argued that the best way he had to describe infinity is via computing. You have a computer, you work so much on it that you run out of memory. What do you do? You go to the shop and you ask for more memory. And that, in a nutshell, is the concept of infinity, which is to say, you can always ask for more. This is the most physical way to encapsulate this idea of infinity. Stefan, as an artist, always asks for more, somehow, because he fundamentally understands and inhabits this very concept.

LS: Pegando na ideia do zero como ponto de partida para enumerações, como aquilo que permite que as sequências existam, a peça SHOW TITLES não tem um #0, começa com o #1. Não havendo um zero, o que é que holds together SHOW TITLES?

NdO: I think SHOW TITLES is held together by enumeration, and we know from the earliest age that to repeat is to enumerate... 1, 2, 3, 4, and many artists, including for instance Martin Creed, Yoko Ono and many others have done work on this. The ICA version, in London, where part of this work was first presented, had 1274 titles, which are compiled in the book one of you is holding. There is an interesting kind of safety and a non-expressive nature in this project, and that is important in the sense that many people associate art with a form of expression. After conceptual art, expression is a possibility but it is not mandatory so, therefore, to count might seem boring and unexpressive to some and it is indeed all those things, but there is a specific reason for it to be there. It gives a boundedness to something, you could just carry on, you could just carry on waiting for Godot and ask the same questions over and over again, in the knowledge that things would carry on. In that there is also, I think, an existential solace: there is, as we were saying earlier on, simply more, because you ask for it each time you utilize the next number... 24, oh yes, 25, and so forth. It is a system that will still guard you, and no matter how much you mess with it as a system and want to spring it open, it will still be there to both guard you and imprison you, at the same time.

LS: Referiste a questão da expressividade, mas o acto de contar, a enumeração, é também uma questão de objectividade. É quase uma actividade científica ou, neste sentido, uma tentativa de delimitar, de forma lógica e passível de ser reconhecida por outros, uma quantidade. O Stefan, ao enumerar 1274 possíveis títulos de exposições, que qualquer pessoa pode utilizar desde que devidamente creditados como uma peça sua, cria um campo de possibilidades. Ele prescreve, através dessa enumeração, certos parâmetros de um discurso artístico, mas também, e talvez sobretudo, de um discurso curatorial, na medida em que um título de uma exposição é, à partida, o condensar dos pressupostos curatoriais que definem uma exposição. Parece-me muito interessante, e na sequência do que dissemos no início da conversa relativamente à prática do Stefan, em termos do embuste, do hoax, do fake e do phony, como é que um artista, numa atitude provocatória, se inscreve num papel de definição e prescrição de um campo de possibilidades curatoriais. Será uma atitude política? O que me interessa na peça é esta aparente contradição, que enforma toda a prática do Stefan, o self-undermining que aqui funciona ao nível do artista delinear possíveis tópicos ou temas para exposições, e de forma mais abrangente, possíveis práticas curatoriais, de terceiros (e não da sua própria actividade artística), que podem recorrer a elas, desde que a autoria, e autoridade, de quem criou o título seja mantida. Isso é, à partida, contraditório, já que é permitido às pessoas a utilização e, sobretudo, apropriação dos conceitos, através dos títulos das exposições, mas apenas na condição dos títulos se manterem vinculados à autoria de quem os definiu inicialmente. Como é que, nesta situação concreta, e numa perspectiva crítica de interrogação deste tipo de mecanismos, se pode manter a autoridade?

NdO: I don't think you can't maintain the authority and I think this is a question of control. This control arguably is lost at the moment when a piece leaves the studio and it comes into a space. If you choose to do something for someone else then clearly you'll lose an infinitesimal amount of the control over it because you cannot dictate how people ought to look at it. I think that SHOWTITLES works, as a project, a curatorial project, in the same way as the writing of a text. As a theoretician you write texts and you quote other authors. There is a tradition of footnoting these other authors, there are quote marks to be used, there are numbers to be put at the bottom of the page, there is a bibliography to be had at the end, and in a sense one might say that SHOWTITLES, and the way it is recycled via other exhibitions, acts like a set of footnotes, and that is all that you can hope for, in the same way that the academic is being quoted in another paper and this paper comes, at a certain point, to his or her cognizance and they say, “wow, they quoted me, this is my sentence!”. This is a tradition, a modus operandi, in critical writing, in academic writing, but somehow it is extremely absent from contemporary art. In part, the reason for that is, on one hand, the modernist notion of originality, which is becoming slightly more interesting again, and on the other, the market. Market prides the single one, the original, above all others, above the series. The painting is more expensive than the screen print, for example, because a screen print is available as an edition of fifty plus ten artist proofs.

LS: É interessante que identifiques a peça SHOWTITLES, ou mais especificamente, a sua utilização, como uma citação, uma quotation, como disseste. A citação, apesar de tudo, não tem um efeito hierarquizante, ou dito de outro modo, a citação encontra-se no corpo, não no título do texto. A citação não define o texto, contextualiza-o e torna-o mais consequente, de alguma forma...

JM: Tens a citação inicial, a que abre o texto...

LS: ...mas aqui constitui-se como o título da exposição. É diferente de, por exemplo no texto que explicita o conceito da exposição tu citares, por algum motivo, a peça SHOWTITLES. É mais do que citação, na medida em que há um efeito de hierarquia. É a enumeração de diferentes possibilidades que podem ser utilizadas como o princípio que estrutura a constituição de um discurso curatorial. Esse discurso, elaborado por alguém, parte de (ou chega a) um título, que é, de alguma forma, a contribuição do Stefan. Sendo assim, parece-me que há aqui uma dimensão hierárquica (o Stefan a definir a priori, a prescrever, de certa maneira, um conjunto de possibilidades que terceiros possam utilizar), que ultrapassa, na sua utilização, a simples citação.

NdO: Certainly, citation is one of the ways of getting at it and the reason why I talk about citation is because all the titles in SHOWTITLES seem familiar. One might argue that they are already citations before they become works, and this is where the shift happens: how do you get from a citation to an object? To my mind these titles are actually objects, strangely enough, because I think of words as objects, particularly if they are a vinyl text on a wall. This transformation from citation to object is valuable precisely because it is effected somehow in every artwork. Only that some artworks show greater awareness of the nature of this transformation and those are the artworks that are more interesting, the self-consciousness in art being a positive thing. In contemporary art this self-consciousness is part of the deal. It says something about the knowledge, the position of the artist, either allowing others to engage in an argument with the artist or, more interestingly, becoming part of the discourse around contemporary art itself. But this is also the question of the original quotation from life, one might say, and these are all very familiar titles, like ONE HUNDRED DUTCH TEENAGE GIRLS. We know that there are clearly one hundred teenage Dutch girls, it stands to reason, so one might say that Stefan Brüggemann did not invent one hundred teenage Dutch girls but instead he's borrowing them and utilizing them in a title. In this translation a work arrives and it is legitimized through the endeavors of the artist and the endeavors of those who show it, because if it isn't shown, the translation doesn't quite happen and it remains in a different kind of level.

LS: Mas achas que há uma diferença entre o acto de mostrar a peça e o acto de usar a peça? Mais especificamente, existe uma diferença entre o que nós estamos a fazer aqui, mostrá-la enquanto instalação sonora, e utilizar um dos títulos, efectivamente, como título de uma exposição? E se sim, onde é que essa diferença reside? Para mim um dos aspectos centrais da peça está aí, na possibilidade de mostrá-la, enquanto peça sonora, livro, vinil na parede, etc, e esta utilização da peça enquanto inventário de possíveis títulos de exposições, que são duas maneiras formalmente e estruturalmente distintas de interagir com a peça...

NdO: I think that one is, for lack of a better description, a traditional artwork. The other one, I wouldn't say it is more risky or anything like that, it's not a hierarchy of things, but the other one is, I would say, the post-production of a piece of work. The post-production is, as we know from many other areas of philosophy and art theory, that which happens after a piece of work. The interesting thing about that is that it is infinite. In other words, we might argue that an artwork is shown in a gallery, then the show ends and the artwork goes somewhere else. However, I think it's making the work resonate beyond its traditional way (all artworks resonate in a way), by being utilized afterwards, that it becomes a kind of post-production, which renders the possibilities of the work limitless. In the same way, you could endlessly retouch a super-model's fashion shot, simply because of the availability of the technology, and that infinity of possibilities is rather interesting, I believe. On one hand it is provocative in that it destabilizes the initial piece, but on the other hand it also becomes complicit in discourses that the piece itself cannot reach.

LS: E, de alguma forma, ao tornar infinita a possibilidade de contacto com a peça, o Stefan desenvolve uma estratégia de marketing perfeita ao torná-la um produto que qualquer pessoa pode usar.

NdO: Absolutamente.

JM: Podes usar sem pagar... ou pagas só com os créditos...

LS: Pagas sempre, porque, num sistema de economia de reputação, ao creditares o Stefan como o autor do título da exposição, que é simultaneamente uma peça dele, está a criar valor e, nesse sentido, é ir para além do mercado tradicional, na direcção de um marketing perfeito.

NdO: I think that's right, and in fact, the correct term for it is franchising. Let's take an example: a chain like Café Rouge which exists all over the world. It follows the concept of a French bistro, which is more French than any French bistro, so that it works as a concept. You, of course, as a customer, buy into this and then you run your own Café Rouge. However, laid upon you are a series of rules and regulations: you must adhere to using a certain paint, you must adhere to the menu, you must adhere to dressing your staff in a certain way and many other things, in other words, there is a reduced amount of room for you to do it your own way. But you don't do it your own way, you don't open your own restaurant because there is less risk if you take a franchise, if you utilize the power of a franchise. To utilize the words of a highly respected artist, is somehow borrowing something of their reflected glory and I find this particularly interesting because what Stefan does to others, through SHOWTITLES, others do to Stefan. Example: I thought it was a stroke of genius of Stefan to do a conversation with Malcom McLaren, not because Malcom McLaren is a great artist, but because Malcom McLaren is a franchise. It is a brand, like you were saying, and therefore you associate yourself with that reflection. What stands out in the long discussion between them are the key terms that Malcom McLaren is seen to own, that are, somehow, through this association, reflected back, as a strategy, upon the work of Stefan. These terms might be punk, nihilism, anarchy, fashion, many different types of things, and they connect similarly with other people that Stefan has worked with. Everyone wants something from someone, this is very clear, and we all go into unequal collaborations and equal collaborations, as well. Sometimes I'll give you this and you'll give me that, but sometimes the thing you're giving to someone seems very large and in return you receive very little, but you still know there is a relationship of exchange taking place. In SHOWTITLES, to associate oneself with the work of Stefan causes a kind of polemic and also, as you say, it is a marketing strategy but, in return, you're also messing with his work, which I think he is very aware of.

LS: Antes de terminarmos escrevi, enquanto falavas, conceptual franchise, como uma possível forma de descrever o SHOWTITLES...

NdO: You must add it as one of the titles... it's very good... I think Stefan would like it too. You must send it to him, but you won't be able to take credit for it... but I do think that this question of crediting is very interesting because there is a lot of naughtiness and a lot of slippage that takes place due to it...



Nicolas de Oliveira é um escritor, curador e académico que vive e trabalha em Londres. É um dos co-autores de ‘Installation Art’ (1994) e ‘Installation art in the New Millenium: Empire of the Senses’ (2003) publicados pela Thames & Hudson, e de várias monografias de artistas, nomeadamente ‘Hans Op de Beeck: On Vanishing’ (2007) ‘The Wilderness Inside’ (2008) e ‘Stefan Brüggemann’ (2008). Oliveira é um fundadores e co-directores do Museum of Installation (1990-2005), Notice Gallery (2006-9), e da galeria SE8 (2009-). Como curador independente realizou inúmeors projectos, destacando-se ‘Vanishing City’ (Programa, México, 2001), com Jose Davila, Stefan Brüggemann, Carl von Weiler, entre outros, e ‘The Scarecrow’ (Averoff Museum, Grécia, 2006) com Mariko Mori, Ugo Rondinone, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Hans Op de Beeck, entre outros. É presentemente Course Leader do mestrado Curating the Contemporary, uma colaboração entre a Whitechapel Gallery e a London Metropolitan University.



Nicolas de Oliveira is a writer, curator and academic living and working in London. He is the joint author of ‘Installation Art’ (1994) and ‘Installation art in the New Millenium: Empire of the Senses’ (2003) two seminal books on the discipline with Thames & Hudson, and of several artist’s monographs including ‘Hans Op de Beeck: On Vanishing’ (2007) with Mercatorfonds, ‘The Wilderness Inside’ (2008) Studio Op de Beeck, and ‘Stefan Bruggemann’ (2008) with JRP Ringier. He is a founding co-director of the Museum of Installation (1990-2005), Notice Gallery, a project-space of MOI (2006-9), and of the contemporary artgallery SE8 (2009-). As a freelance curator, he curated ‘Vanishing City’ (Programa, Mexico, 2001) with Jose Davila, Stefan Bruggemann, Carl von Weiler et al, and ‘The Scarecrow’ (Averoff Museum, 2006) with Mariko Mori, Ugo Rondinone, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Hans Op de Beeck and many others. He is currently Course Leader of the MA Curating the Contemporary, a collaborative masters programme of the Whitechapel Gallery and London Metropolitan University.