GRUPPENBILD 1
Object / Postperformative Artefact
Result of a 120-day process, exhibition and ritual with audience participation
Photo mounted on Dibond, 90 × 120 cm, photographed by Tobias Pilz
Attached with 8 wing screws to an iron frame with passage function
Created during Am Wachsen – Ready To Switch in 2014, Startgalerie / MUSA, Vienna
The work can be seen as an autonomous, standalone artwork, but is also the first materialisation and part of the ongoing process, long-term performance, and research structure Stand der Materie.
Am Wachsen – Ready To Switch
Excerpt from the book Stand der Materie:
Even during the process of sorting things out, I developed the concept for the exhibition. I engaged with the meaning of the term “Startgalerie” and with the function and form of a presence in public space, and I decided not to develop one or several individual works, but instead to arrange all of my possessions within the space and address them as a representative field that could be read by the viewer. My intention was not to show how minimalistically I live, but to come as close as possible to defining my position and to question a boundary between the public and the personal.
The second point was an examination of the function of the exhibition flyer as a representative carrier of information and of the space in which the exhibition took place. I decided to connect the two by printing the floor plan of the Startgalerie on one side of the A4 flyer. In this way, the information carrier was transformed into a potential carrier and assigned an additional function. For the informational side, two photographs were produced that contain the exhibition title within them: Am Wachsen and Ready To Switch.
An iron frame with passage function, installed at the entrance to the exhibition, had the task of making it more conscious that one was participating in a ritual. From the moment of passing through the frame, the visitor was no longer only entering the premises of the Startgalerie, but had stepped into an imaginary place.
The third point of my intention was to create a moment in which I would experience a collective consciousness together with the audience. From this thought I developed a ritual in which, through the execution of an action, I directed the attention of the visitors in such a way that, within our consciousness, nothing existed except the present.
When passing through the frame, the visitor was given a previously prepared exhibition flyer, which fulfilled two functions in the action that followed. The first function was to anonymise the identity of the individual participants in order to gain a neutrality within the group and to intensify the significance of the place. The second function was to concentrate the attention of all participants, at the same time, on an element that was perceptible only for a brief moment.
After the visitor had passed through the frame and received the tool of the action (the prepared flyer), they had to take one of 100 numbered key tags from the wall. The numbers were not visible; they were arranged randomly in a grid of 10 × 10. Their role was to assign an individual significance to the participants during the later course of the action.
Once everyone was inside, I removed the iron frame. There was no longer any possibility of leaving the imaginary space. I then climbed onto a scaffold and looked down into the crowd through the holes cut into the flyer. The participants in the action followed my instruction and looked back up at me through the flyer.
At that moment, the tool held in front of their faces became a filter of perception. I had only two possibilities: either to see the entire group as a whole, or to connect automatically with individuals through direct eye contact. It was a highly charged moment. I realised that I was in a situation in which a process was leading me to a result that was giving me something I had never experienced before. My awareness of the presence of all my possessions in the room intensified the feeling even further. I knew that nothing existed except the here and now. My goal had been reached.
The climax of the ritual was documented photographically and materialised one week later. A group portrait came into being, inserted into the iron frame through which all participants had previously passed. An object carrying a story within itself was created.
At the finissage on 6 November, all of my works and potential carriers were assigned to the numbers on the key tags. Everyone who appeared in the group portrait, and who therefore possessed one of the key tags, received the corresponding object as a gift.
For me, the act of giving these things away, and the transfer of the value onto Gruppenbild 1, was connected to a questioning of the potential of artistic products and of the position of the artist.
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