Eduardo Abaroa//Giorgio Agamben//Paul Barolsky// Larry Bell
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Eduardo Abaroa//Giorgio Agamben//Paul Barolsky// Larry Bell//Daniel Birnbaum//Heike Bollig//Will Bradley//Bazon Brock//Barbara Buchmaier//Chris Burden//Johanna Burton//John Cage//Merlin Carpenter//Emma Cocker//Tacita Dean//Gilles Deleuze//Emma Dexter//Brian Dillon//Sam Durant// Russell Ferguson//Fischli & Weiss//Joel Fisher//Liam Gillick//Clive Gillman//Renée Green//Jörg Heiser// Jennifer Higgie//Richard Hylton//International Necronautical Society//Gabriela Jauregui//Ray Johnson//Jean-Yves Jouannais//Inés Katzenstein// Rachel Kent//Søren Kierkegaard//Joseph Kosuth// Christy Lange//Lisa Lee//Lotte Møller//Stuart Morgan// Hans-Joachim Müller//Yoshua Okon//Simon Patterson// William Pope L.//Karl Popper//Mark Prince//Yvonne Rainer//Paul Ricoeur//Dieter Roth//Scott A. Sandage// Edgar Schmitz//Julian Schnabel//Robert Smithson// Abigail Solomon-Godeau//Frances Stark//Harald Szeemann//Sarah Thornton//Coosje van Bruggen// Marcus Verhagen//Paul Watzlawick//William Wegman//Michael Wilson//Ludwig Wittgenstein Failure Whitechapel Gallery London The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts Edited by Lisa Le Feuvre F A I L U R E Documents of Contemporary Art Co-published by Whitechapel Gallery Series Editor: Iwona Blazwick and The MIT Press Executive Director: Tom Wilcox Commissioning Editor: Ian Farr First published 2010 Project Editor: Hannah Vaughan © 2010 Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Limited Design by SMITH: Victoria Forrest, Namkwan Cho All texts © the authors or the estates of the authors, Printed and bound in China unless otherwise stated Cover, Still from the film Steamboat Bill Jnr. (1928) Whitechapel Gallery is the imprint of Whitechapel starring Buster Keaton. © United Artists. Gallery Ventures Limited Photograph courtesy of The Cinema Museum www.cinemamuseum.org.uk All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system Whitechapel Gallery Ventures Limited or transmitted in any form or by any means, 77–82 Whitechapel High Street electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, London E1 7QX without the written permission of the publisher www.whitechapelgallery.org To order (UK and Europe) call +44 (0)207 522 7888 ISBN 978-0-85488-182-6 (Whitechapel Gallery) or email [email protected] ISBN 978-0-262-51477-4 (The MIT Press) Distributed to the book trade (UK and Europe only) by Central Books A catalogue record for this book is available from www.centralbooks.com the British Library The MIT Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 55 Hayward Street Cambridge, MA 02142 Failure / edited by Lisa Le Feuvre MIT Press books may be purchased at special p. cm. — (Whitechapel, documents of quantity discounts for business or sales promotional contemporary art) use. For information, please email special_sales@ Includes bibliographical references and index. mitpress.mit.edu or write to Special Sales ISBN 978-0-262-51477-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, 1. Failure (Psychology) in art. 2. Arts, Modern— Cambridge, MA 02142 20th century. 3. Arts, Modern—21st century. I. Le Feuvre, Lisa. NX650.F33F35 2010 709.04—dc22 2010006956 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Documents of Contemporary Art In recent decades artists have progressively expanded the boundaries of art as they have sought to engage with an increasingly pluralistic environment. Teaching, curating and understanding of art and visual culture are likewise no longer grounded in traditional aesthetics but centred on significant ideas, topics and themes ranging from the everyday to the uncanny, the psychoanalytical to the political. The Documents of Contemporary Art series emerges from this context. Each volume focuses on a specific subject or body of writing that has been of key influence in contemporary art internationally. Edited and introduced by a scholar, artist, critic or curator, each of these source books provides access to a plurality of voices and perspectives defining a significant theme or tendency. For over a century the Whitechapel Gallery has offered a public platform for art and ideas. In the same spirit, each guest editor represents a distinct yet diverse approach – rather than one institutional position or school of thought – and has conceived each volume to address not only a professional audience but all interested readers. Series Editor: Iwona Blazwick; Commissioning Editor: Ian Farr; Project Editor: Hannah Vaughan; Executive Director: Tom Wilcox; Editorial Advisory Board: Achim Borchardt-Hume, Roger Conover, Neil Cummings, Mark Francis, David Jenkins, Kirsty Ogg, Gilane Tawadros La Monte Young, Composition 1960 #10, 1960 Introduction//012 DISSATISFACTION AND REJECTION//022 IDEALISM AND DOUBT//066 ERROR AND INCOMPETENCE//114 EXPERIMENT AND PROGRESS//164 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES//226 Bibliography//232 INDEX//235 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS//240 DISSATISFACTION AND REJECTION Paul Barolsky The Fable of Failure in Modern Art, 1997//024 Dieter Roth Interview with Felicitas Thun, 1998//027 Abigail Solomon-Godeau The Rightness of Wrong, 1996//030 Sarah Thornton On John Baldessari, 2008//032 Stuart Morgan The Man Who Couldn’t Get Up: Paul Thek, 1995//033 Ray Johnson On Another Throwaway Gesture Performance (1979), 1984//038 Clive Gillman David Critchley: Pieces I Never Did (1979), 2005//038 Marcus Verhagen There’s No Success Like Failure: Martin Kippenberger, 2006//039 Merlin Carpenter I was an Assistant (to Kippenberger, Büttner and Oehlen), 1990//043 Emma Dexter Authenticity and Failure: Luc Tuymans, 2004//047 Michael Wilson Just Pathetic, 2004//050 Mark Prince Feint Art: Martin Creed, Ceal Floyer, Sergej Jensen, Michael Krebber, Paul Pfeiffer, 2003//052 Johanna Burton Rites of Silence: Wade Guyton, 2004//057 Daniel Birnbaum Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: De Novo, 2009//065 IDEALISM AND DOUBT Paul Ricoeur Memory and Imagination, 2000//068 Søren Kierkegaard The Concept of Irony, 1841//072 Gilles Deleuze Bartleby, or The Formula, 1989//076 Giorgio Agamben Bartleby, or On Contingency, 1993//081 Paul Watzlawick On the Nonsense of Sense and the Sense of Nonsense, 1995//084 Scott A. Sandage The Invention of Failure: Interview with Sina Najafi and David Serlin, 2002//085 John Cage Anarchy, Poem I, 1988//089 Joseph Kosuth Exemplar: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 1994//090 Renée Green Partially Buried. Version B: Reading Script, 1999//094 Lotte Møller Failures: Annika Ström, 2008//102 Jennifer Higgie The Embarrassing Truth: Matthew Brannon, 2008//103 International Necronautical Society Tate Declaration on Inauthenticity, 2009//108 ERROR AND INCOMPETENCE Joel Fisher Judgement and Purpose, 1987//116 Brian Dillon Eternal Return, 2003//122 Larry Bell Something caused one of the glass panels to crack …, 1997//125 William Wegman Bad News, 1971//126 Chris Burden TV Hijack (1972), 1973//127 Chris Burden On Pearl Harbour (1971), 1990//128 Tacita Dean And He Fell into the Sea, 1996//129 Julian Schnabel Statement, 1978//131 Christy Lange Bound to Fail, 2005//131 Jörg Heiser All of a Sudden, 2008//137 Fischli & Weiss The Odd Couple: Interview with Jörg Heiser, 2006//143 Fischli & Weiss How to Work Better, 1991//145 Richard Hylton The Moving World of Janette Paris, 2002//146 Heike Bollig and Barbara Buchmaier Holes in Our Pants, 2007//151 Emma Cocker Over and Over, Again and Again, 2009//154 EXPERIMENT AND PROGRESS Coosje van Bruggen Sounddance: Bruce Nauman, 1988//166 Yvonne Rainer Interview with Michaela Meise, 2008//169 Robert Smithson Conversation with Dennis Wheeler, 1969–70//171 Frances Stark For nobody knows himself, if he is only himself and not also another one at the same time: On Allen Ruppersberg, 2002//173 Karl Popper Unended Quest, 1974//177 Bazon Brock Cheerful and Heroic Failure, 2004//180 Jean-Yves Jouannais Prometheus’ Delay: Roman Signer, 1995//182 Inés Katzenstein A Leap Backwards into the Future: Paul Ramírez Jonas, 2004//184 Will Bradley The Village, 1997//190 Simon Patterson Manned Flight, 1999–//192 Harald Szeemann Failure as a Poetic Dimension, 2001//195 Russell Ferguson Politics of Rehearsal: Francis Alÿs, 2007//195 Hans-Joachim Müller Failure as a Form of Art, 2009//200 Edgar Schmitz Which Way to Heaven: Phil Collins, 2007//204 Lisa Lee Make Life Beautiful! The Diabolic in the Work of Isa Genzken, 2007//209 Eduardo Abaroa, Sam Durant, Gabriela Jauregui, Yoshua Okon, William Pope L. Thoughts on Failure, Idealism and Art, 2008//215 Liam Gillick Transcript from Three Perspectives and a Short Scenario, 2008//220 Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921//225 Lisa Le Feuvre Introduction//Strive to Fail Uncertainty and instability characterize these times. Nonetheless, success and progress endure as a condition to strive for, even though there is little faith in either. All individuals and societies know failure better than they might care to admit – failed romance, failed careers, failed politics, failed humanity, failed failures. Even if one sets out to fail, the possibility of success is never eradicated, and failure once again is ushered in. In the realm of art, though, failure has a different currency. Failure, by definition, takes us beyond assumptions and what we think we know. Artists have long turned their attention to the unrealizability of the quest for perfection, or the open-endedness of experiment, using both dissatisfaction and error as means to rethink how we understand our place in the world. The inevitable gap between the intention and realization of an artwork makes failure impossible to avoid. This very condition of art-making makes failure central to the complexities of artistic