Upward, Behind the Onstreaming It Mooned

Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned

SEBASTIAN KOECK Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned SEBASTIAN KOECK

Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien Studienrichtung: Medienkunst Studienzweig: Transmediale Kunst Sommersemester 2021 Brigitte Kowanz Matrikelnummer 1302029 4 / 5 0 The installation Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned combines a variety of media, ranging from drawing, installation and objects to audio works. The setting is inspired by the Age of Sail, the era when sailing ships embodied the pinnacle of technological advancements and dominated the world for over three centuries. Besides my juvenile fascination for ma- ritime lore, adventure and discovery, historical implications such as colonialism, technological progress and globalization form the thematic undertone of the exhibition. The objects in the installation induce familiarity, but they’re never explicit. They’re merely the representation of fantastic historicity – shadows of the real world – and they resemble an entrance; surfaces that act as props; the idea of antiques, inscribed age, hollow on the inside; the notion that bullet holes could resemble celestial maps; a generated face; words written by dreams.

I am creating a place inside the (exhibition-)space, located somewhere between the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary realm, where meaning is only ever suggested to create a three-dimensional canvas upon which desires, fears, and experiences might be projected.

The title is referencing the short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis 1 Borges, p. 15-34 Tertius 1 by Jorge Luis Borges. It’s the account of Borges himself discovering an encyclopedia entry about a forgotten country, somewhere in Anatolia, called Uqbar. As he fnds out more about this vaguely described civilization, he learns that the literary works of Uqbarians are exclusively addres- sing the fctional world of Tlön, where language is devoid of nouns. “The moon rose over the river” in Tlön, would be “Hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö” which translates to “Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned”. Furthermore, the inhabitants of Tlön deny the realness of the world, negating all things, claiming that reality is not a cluster of objects but an infnite sequence of events. Towards the end of the story Bor- ges discovers that Tlön and Uqbar are fabricated by a secret society of conspirative intellectuals, that planned to completely corrode reality, slowly replacing it with Tlön-culture. As a reader, I suspect, that the result of Borges’ „research“ is part of his own fabrication. What he’s telling us is an example of fction pushing into reality. It is a testament to the seduc- tive sorcery of storytelling and the fact that the human mind tends to detect and reveal underlying truths. Maybe that’s why I look for connections compulsively, despite the danger of paranoia that comes with it.

The following pages are going to illustrate my artistic cosmology, describing frst and foremost a materialized methodo- logy, rather than the result. A series of fragmented writings, historical excursions and collected images, that constitute the basis for my sculptural practice. They are ultimately subjec- tive, excessively narrative, and inherently incomplete. They provide a cognitive context for my sculptural works. 6 / 7 1 As my body hit the foor I heard a loud thud. Bag removed, dazzling white entered my eyes. Five or six seconds later, my worst nightmare became reality: I was lying on a ship, rubbing my joints, trapped in a doorless prison. Space was buzzing and the things around me appeared to be laughing at my imagined self-importance. As if they knew that they’ll outlast me. It’s clear to me now, that in a thousand years, we’ll still be chasing beasts and precious earths, and our arrival will herald the demise of thousands, always in good intention. As we’re trying to create rules, that might suff- ciently ascribe meaning to the physical world, our space will disappear with us and the resulting void will instantly be occupied by someone else’s. Reality is casting a shadow of fabrication, lit by our memories and the friction of the existing spaces. My freedom is now the substance of my imagination. 8 / 9 1965 Donald Judd published his renowned essay Specifc Ob- jects, in an effort to tear down the seemingly unimpeacha- ble autonomy of art. He became later associated with the artistic movement dubbed minimalism, which featured a lot of geometrical forms, repetition, and grids. Meanwhile contemporary art critic Michael Fried desperately tried to stop this paradigm shift with his essay titled Art & Objec- thood. As a reaction to the minimalist idea, he made a case for the modernist movement, specifcally Abstract Expres- sionism. Fried argued that art is, by defnition, composed with an internal coherence and therefore autonomous from its surroundings, time, and space. It doesn’t need the outside world to ascribe meaning, as it is inherent to the art piece. itself. Fried implied that art seems to exist outside daily life, specifcally because it is defeating its own objecthood. Mini- malist art, on the other hand, seeks to create objects that are spatially continuous with the outside world, meaning they share the same spatial and temporal reality as everything else. They are part of our environment, engaging with space and subjects that surround them and therefore making the space part of the artwork as much as the materials they con- sist of. While the sacred sovereignty of modern art ignores the viewer, minimalist art includes the viewer like an actor on a stage. Fried saw something theatrical in the minimalist movement, blending the work of art and the experience of viewing it. Fried stated that “art degenerates as it approaches 2 Fried, 1967, p. 21 the condition of theatre.”2 He feared that as soon as the se- parate mediums intermingle, art would be incorporated into daily life, and therefore will be relegated to triviality. History has shown of course, that through this process a variety of wholly new approaches in thinking about art has emerged. It is, what we now generally call contemporary art.

This confict on the brink of modernism (although probably only perceived as one through the lens of time) is ultimately concerned with the question what material is. While the modernists thought about material in terms of commodities – pigment, metals, earths; focussing on how to apply or shape it – the minimalist movement introduced the idea of gesture being the material. Of course, Donald Judd used plywood, aluminum and such, but I’d argue his material use was much more about the way he processed it: namely in an industrial and decidedly non-expressive way, focussing on the way objects behave in relation to the human body and the space they both inhabit.

While the questions introduced by the minimalist movement are not explicitly discussed in my practice, they serve as a point of origin. The impulse that made me deal with sculpture, keeping me from becoming a falconer. 10 / 11 2 I think river-like, pacing through a vast and diverse valley, picking up everything I touch, constantly expanding my re- ach, following only a single calling: downwards. Where there is no way, I dodge. Aeons of endlessly eroding boulders, relo- cating debris, scraping, and transforming reality’s makeup as I move along. Every now and then, I break my neck, and as you stare at my somber, abandoned reservoir, orphaned and heating up, I remember that I was perpetually moving. Now I’m dead water. 12 / 13 1909 In Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere Jakob Johann Baron von Uexküll frst introduced the terminology for Umwelt. He carefully distinguished the Umgebung, the objective space in which we can observe living things move, from Umwelt, that is shaped by every being’s inherent capabilities to perceive and operate with its environment. He calls these Merkorgan (perceptive organ) and Handlungsorgan (opera- tional organ). For humans, being the ones who describe this concept, the Umgebung and Umwelt of humans are virtu- ally aligned. But Uexküll didn’t fool himself into believing in hierarchical superiority. Instead, he argued against an anthropocentric biology and described every living thing’s respective Umwelt as an extension of their body, a closed unity between the being and its environment. It’s not this over that, but rather different creatures acting on different terms. Uexkülls example of a spider is particularly beautiful and reveals his admiration for the biological realm. Accor- ding to him, the spider doesn’t know anything about the measurements or weight of the fy, “nor can it measure its 3 Agamben, 2004, p. 41 client as a tailor does before sewing his suit.”3 But the way it constructs its web, it’s perfectly aligned with the fy’s weight and size and can resist the impact of a fy in motion. Furt- hermore, the thickness of the thread of the web is perfectly proportioned to render it invisible for the fy’s visual capaci- ty. “The two perceptual worlds of the fy and the spider are absolutely uncommunicating, and yet so perfectly in tune that we might say that the original score of the fy, which we can also call its original image or archetype, acts on that of the spider in such a way that the web the spider weaves can 4 Ibid, 2004, p. 42 be described as fy-like.“4

At the time of its publication, this concept stirred up the anthropocentric worldview and gave birth to the ecological movement. Later on, this paradigm shift, somehow echoes in the concept of object-orientated ontology, which introduced an even more open relation between not only living but also non-living things. The way Uexküll describes the fact that the spider isn’t aware of the fy’s existence, but at the same time is connected to it, implies something deeply empathetic and puzzling. Withouth implying a deterministic ideology, these synergies raise a so many abstract questions, that pro- ducing art seems to be the only possible reaction, for myself at least.

In regards to the philosophical implications made by Kant in 1781’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft, concerning Noume- 5 Kant, 1974, p. 210 non5: the antagonism to phenomena, that describe objects and events that exist outside of the human senses. One has to wonder how we are interacting within this sphere, completely unaware. 14 / 15 3 Thirty or ffty thousand years ago, everyone exclusively used the tools that were connected to their bodies and nobody laughed or slept in. Humid air drastically reduced the fre- quency of blinking. The loudest voice among them proposed universal synchronization of all blinks. They deemed it was a good idea and agreed in unison, that every blink should mark the beginning of a new year. Blink, blink, blink, distan- ce gazed, reaching out a single fnger, extended upwards. It crashed luminously and the orchestra of horrors, beauty, life, and death went silent. The others, furiously confused and fa- scinated, investigated the phalanxian index in bewilderment. It took the equivalent of three days by today’s standards, and the others extended the line that started at the shoulder and ended at the tip of the fnger, and their senses became aware, and their hearts were fueled by their desires, and as the admiration for the index fnger depraved pointing was irreversibly introduced into the collective perception. As the air dried up, decreased blinking frequencies and newfound individual velocities prevailed. 16 / 17 1996 Danish architect Juhani Pallasmaa published The Eyes of the Skin – Architecture and the Senses in an effort to question and rethink the dominance of vision and as a consequence thereof, the suppression and fading of the other senses in the way we experience space and architecture. He argues that all of the human senses constitute an extension of the sense of touch, as they are “[…] specializations of the skin. They defne the interface between the skin and the environment – between the opaque interiority of the body and the 6 Pallasmaa, 2012, p. 42 exteriority of the world.”6 Our senses work as the portal that connects and locates our bodies to the world. In regards to architecture we get perceived by a building through the entrance door: as we touch the door handle, we’re connecting to the thousands that entered before us, polishing, collectively wearing and tearing this shiny moment of transition, “welco- me and hospitality.” Pallasmaa concludes: “The door handle 7 Ibid, p. 56 is the handshake of the building.”7 and through the countless generations touching it, leaving their mark, it becomes a repository of duration, a manifestation of time.

Refecting on in- and exteriority Pallasmaa is not talking about the relation between individuals and their respective environment in stricly seperated terms, but connecting the two. While inside and outside seem to be very defned and antagonistic volumes, to me they always feel very much connected with each other. Furthermore, in my superfcial understanding of phenomenology, these contemplations made me accept the inevitable contradiction of subjetive- self-aware-frst-person-perception, while at the same time embracing the universally unifying experience of existence. Thinking about the perceived meaning that things posess in my experience, often ends up becoming an empathetic shared moment.

In Abbas Kiarostamis movie Where Is the Friends Home? (Khae-ye doust kodjast?) from 1987 the viewer is frequently presented with subtle shots of doors closing, doors opening and a sleazy door-salesman that is advocating the advantages of his newer and safer doors. Kiarostami and Pallasmaa are both, in their own and completely different way, singing a song about the human condition of being naturally trapped in a physical world that we can describe, but never fully un- derstand, as we look for patterns, clues and childlike memories, that make some sense of what we perceive. Telling each other stories, some of which are based on experience, others which are completely made up, but in the end, it doesn’t real- ly matter. The moment we express ourselves, we’re construc- ting our own cosmology, creating our world inside of some- body else’s, all working on the same stage of the mothership. 18 / 19 4 United cinderblocks, well buried by gallons of spurred and spat-out liquids, drowned and frowned, reborn, erased, re- kindled, thrown, let go, discovered and recovered by eons of fickering hearts, fueled despair and ever aching lore, awaits, a rigorously tucked in, knit by salad fngers, portrait of ingenuity, and disbelief. “I care” inscribed on the dark side of its face, revealing new horizons, unplugged tides, and bare hands. Caressed cold calves, centered charcoal chives cut by hot-hearted youngsters, leaving their trash behind. I laugh and withdraw myself, to be close to my immanent atrocities, amidst the simmering desires of speech and thoughts appear the outward patterns of a mute sense of belonging, concealed meaning, in hollow shapes, cyphered hieroglyphics of an intention to connect. 20 / 21 1993 Umberto Eco published Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, a collection of essays investigating different styles and tools of fctional literature, analyzing the relation between truth and fction and describing the latter as a lazy machine. Eco notes that every form of narrative fction is inevitably “faster” than the real world, as it can never describe the whole world it’s trying to create. So in order to focus on the creation of characters and the world around them, one has to skip a lot of the details, that would be perceived en passant in everyday life. While actual machines serve a specifc purpose, carefully calculated, planned and executed by their engineers to satisfy our need for industrial pragmatism, the text has to imply and suggest details – asking the reader to fll those va- cancies. A lazy machine demands a cooperative reader, that 8 Eco, 1994, p. 11 is willing to invest their fantasy into the plot.8

Artworks demand a similar willingness for interpretation and sensory exchange, without being too explicit. They expect their viewers to accept the fact, that art does not operate the same way machines do. Although both, conventional and lazy machines, are co-existing in the same realm, the lazy ones are parasitic, as they are constrained by the laws that govern our reality: literally – by the words and concepts we’re familiar with; visually and sonically – by the range of our senses, etc. Once the viewer is aware of the fact that they‘re confronted with a lazy machine, they are invited to leave the shackles of the (productive) machine behind them, to become lazy themselves and experience something alien and unfamiliar.

By introducing forms or gestures that look familiar, but are not explicit, could it expand imaginative involvement, I’m more interested in the idea of a thing than the actual thing, settling somewhere between the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic; claiming that it’s part of an individual history, inducing legitimacy and importance; skewing the construc- tion, as to deny its usability, just enough so that the viewer can tell, that it is no utilitarian object. Jumping back and forth between scenery and sculpture to create a scene that communicates, but is merely the shadows of a story, a prop for something else. 22 / 23 5 After roaming for several hours over the southern mountain pass, sluggishly approaching the summit of some nameless, uncharted topography, the protagonist spotted another pio- neer at roughly the same altitude as him, similarly shaped, over at the eastern pass. They were walking together, side by side several hundred meters apart, no one else between them. Pretending that he didn’t care about this other self, he caught himself glancing over at this reddish-hatted rival, at every chance he got. Whenever there was a clearing amidst the thick and blueish-hued green, he observed the spot where he thought he’d fnd his antagonist. Surely, a red hat emerged. Imagining that he’s observing himself, gave him some sense of power at frst. Shortly after, he felt all alone and forlorn. Every step he took was operating his rival’s feet, every glance would also steer his companion’s head towards him. Paranoia spread as he got faster with each step, eventu- ally reaching the summit.

When they were fnished talking, he felt content with himself, stared for two seconds into the void, and then left without farewell. 24 / 25 Selection of my pictoral cosmology (Copyright by the author, if not stated otherwise.) 26 / 27

Reality

Words

Sebastian Koeck, untitled (Kritik), 2020

Exchanging matter with surrounding space. 28 / 29 ?

Manmade grooved markings on St. Michaelskir- che at Weidenberg. Origins not clarifed. Theo- ries range from using fintstones on the wall to light laterns, to sharpening tools. (fg. 1)

Studiowall separating the recording booth and the control room. These indivudial rooms make up the sound studio. The depicted wall was used by Rene Reitz, recording austri- an musicians like Georg Danzer and Falco.

Composite sketches of Madeleine McCanns abductor juxta- posed with suspect Christian B. (fg. 2) 30 / 31

Life history of a meander. (fg. 3) 32 / 33

„Vision and tactile sense are fused in actual lived experience.“ (cf. Pallasmaa, p. 29) (fg. 4)

Schematic Illustration of the Wirkkreis. (fg. 5)

History ? Story

Sebastian Koeck, untitled (Kritik), 2020 34 / 35

Only composition I made with FACE 4.0, that is used by United States law enforcement, intuitively moulding a face out of 4000 facial assets that promise to represent humanity in its entirety. 36 / 37

Being inside, outside and in between at the same time. 38 / 39

Full-rigged ships sail plan describing all the technical com- ponents. The entrance is not consideres technical. (fg. 6)

Goethe Monument at Schubertring in Vienna. The left foot reaching over the plinth, invitating passers-by to connect with the colossal poet. (fg. 7) 40 / 41

Setting the mood for the recording session of „Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned“.

Developement of urban intrastructure reveals temporal structures, that allow the inhabitants to hover over concealed supply of evolved commodities. 42 / 43

Thoughts

Objects

Thoughts

Sebastian Koeck, untitled (Kritik), 2020

The imagined entrance of a ship. Technically it’s always open, in reality only adjoiing space is activating it. There is no technical term for this doorstep. Bibliographical reference Picture Credits

Borges, Jorge Luis (1999): Fiktionen: Erzählungen. fg. 1 Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH: Frankfurt am Main Werner Schamel, Wetzrillen am Brauttor der St. Michaelskir- che am Gurtstein in Weidenberg, 2013. Fried, Michael (1967): Art and Objecthood. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wetzril- Artforum Summer 1967, p 12-23 lenWeidenberg.JPG, [Accessed 13.06.2021]

Agamben, Giorgio (2004): The Open: Man and Animal. fg. 2 Stanford University Press: Stanford, California SPIEGEL TV, Maddie, Inga und ein Verdächtiger: Das kri- minelle Leben des Christian Brückner, 2020. Kant, Immanuel (1974): III/IV: Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mmz2gapVFA Suhrkamp Verlag: Berlin (21st Edition) Screenshot by author.

Pallasmaa, Juhani (2012): The Eyes of the Skin: fg. 3 Architecture and the Senses. Maksim, The development of a river meander into an oxbow Wiley: Hoboken, New Jersey. (3rd Edition) lake. Flow is from the left. Deposition of material is on the banks of the inner curves, erosion on the outside, 2011. Eco, Umberto (1994): Im Wald der Fiktionen: Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meander_ Sechs Streifzüge durch die Literatur. Oxbow_development.svg [Accessed 13.06.2021] Carl Hanser Verlag: München Wien fg. 4 Herbert Bayer, The Lonely Metropolitan, 1932.

fg. 5 Jakob Johann von Uexküll, Theoretische Biologie, 1920.

fg 6. Author unknown. A Ship of War, of the third Rate, With Rigging etc. at Anchor‘‘, from the 1728 ‚‘Cyclopaedia‘, Volume 2. Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:A_ Ship_of_War,_Cyclopaedia,_1728,_Vol_2_edit.jpg [Accessed 13.06.2021]

fg 7. MrPanyGoff, Goethe monument in Vienna, 2012. Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Goethe_monu- ment_-_Vienna.jpg, [Accessed 13.06.2021] 46 / 47 Acknowledgements

I’m forever grateful to Magdalena for her unconditional sup- port, helping hands, open ears and honest mouth. To Raphael for his calm and kind words, in times of need. To Rosa for her realness and her sonic wizardry. To Luize for her umlimited curiosity and passion. To Aaron who is talking sense into my deviations. To Maximilian for his affection and the countless conversations that always seem to defy small talk. And to my parents for doing a great job.